Aravind Srinivas was accepted into the University of California, Berkeley for his PhD and his mother was disappointed as she had hoped he would go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, things worked out differently as he interned at OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind on the west coast, both of which became leaders in generative artificial intelligence (AI). With this experience, he co-founded Perplexity, a generative-AI startup recently valued at $1bn, providing fast, Wikipedia-like responses to search queries. Despite his unassuming interview demeanor, he is ambitious and aims to compete with Google search, one of the best business models of all time.
Mr. Srinivas is a student of disruption and notes the differences in culture between OpenAI and DeepMind. He uses disruption theory to identify Alphabet’s vulnerability as Google’s parent company. Instead of explaining how Perplexity’s business model will take on the search giant, he turns to “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen to make his case. Along with other generative-AI sites like You.com, he sees potential in disrupting Google with innovations like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. However, this argument is seen as off the mark by some.
