Aravind Srinivas, an alumnus of IIT-Madras, has raised $73.6 million for his startup in a funding round led by IVP. Aravind is the co-founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based startup, Perplexity AI.
Aravind Srinivas finds himself in a David vs. Goliath scenario as he challenges Google and Microsoft Bing in the search engine field
Along with Aravind, Perplexity AIwas founded by Denis Yarats (former Facebook AI research scientist), Andy Konwinski (Databricks co-founder), and Johnny Ho (former Quora engineer), raised $73.6 million from Nvidia and Jeff Bezos this week.
The AI startup was valued at $520 million by Institutional Venture Partners, NEA, and Databricks Ventures. The company has raised $100 million.
The company’s CEO, Srinivas, interned at DeepMind, Google, and OpenAI before becoming a research scientist.
Despite the modest valuation in the Generative AI ecosystem, the 16-month-old business has reached a milestone. The money comes as Google and Microsoft are integrating AI into their search engines.
The chatbot-like Perplexity interface lets users ask inquiries in everyday language. Perplexity offers Copilot, an AI assistant like Microsoft.
The Perplexity search tools provide immediate, dependable answers with full sources and citations. Srinivas wrote in a blog post that there is no need to click on links, compare responses, or search for information.
In an era of misinformation and AI hallucinations, we believe accuracy and openness are essential to making AI-powered search widespread.
The firm reported 10 million monthly active users and over half a billion queries in 2023.
Srinivas says “the times of sifting through SEO spam, sponsored links, and multiple web pages will be replaced by a much more efficient way to consume and share information.”
Conclusion
Perplexity AI co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas raised $73.6 million from Nvidia and Jeff Bezos. The $100 million AI business includes a chatbot-like interface and Copilot, an AI assistant. The company provides quick, accurate responses in everyday language with full references and citations. In 2023, the company had 10 million monthly active users and served over half a billion searches. Srinivas believes AI-powered search would eliminate SEO spam, sponsored links, and many web pages, a major milestone in Generative AI.
