Who Is Aravind Srinivas, the Co-Founder of Perplexity?

Aravind Srinivas is the co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Perplexity, the artificial intelligence (AI) search engine founded in 2022.

At Layer3Labs, we build AI automation workflows for businesses, so we evaluate how search engines handle enterprise information retrieval.

Before co-founding Perplexity, Srinivas was a research scientist at OpenAI and completed doctoral research in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Aravind Srinivas at a Glance

Aravind Srinivas is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Perplexity, an artificial intelligence search engine designed to answer complex queries with cited web sources. In late August 2026, Reuters, citing The Information, reported that Nvidia was in discussions to invest in Perplexity at a valuation exceeding $30 billion. That report noted that Perplexity had grown annualized revenue past $750 million from less than $250 million at the beginning of 2026.

Before founding Perplexity, Srinivas conducted machine learning research during internships at Google and DeepMind, followed by a research scientist appointment at OpenAI.

Sources differ slightly on his title: an IIT Madras alumni citation identifies him as President and CEO, while Reuters and CNBC call him CEO.

• Current Role: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Perplexity
• Organization: Perplexity (co-founded August 22, 2022)
• Known For: Founding Perplexity, developing generative search interfaces, and research in reinforcement learning
• Education: Dual Degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras (2017); PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley (2021)
• Recent Coverage: Discussions regarding a valuation above $30 billion with Nvidia and scaling annualized revenue above $750 million

Academic Background and Engineering Education

In 2017, Srinivas graduated with a Dual Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, according to his IIT Madras alumni citation. The institute honored his professional work by naming him a recipient of its Young Alumni Achiever Award in 2026.

Following his undergraduate training, Srinivas pursued graduate research at the University of California, Berkeley. A UC Berkeley profile records that he completed his PhD in Computer Science in 2021 under the supervision of Pieter Abbeel.

Research Positions at OpenAI, DeepMind, and Google

As reported by Business Today, Srinivas completed a research internship at OpenAI in 2018 focusing on reinforcement learning. In 2019, he interned at DeepMind in London, where his investigations concentrated on contrastive learning systems.

Srinivas continued his research career through an internship at Google between 2020 and 2021. During that tenure, he contributed to visual architecture projects including HaloNet and ResNet-RS. After completing his doctoral degree at UC Berkeley in 2021, Srinivas returned to OpenAI as a full-time research scientist, working there for approximately one year before leaving to build Perplexity.

Founding of Perplexity in 2022

Aravind Srinivas co-founded Perplexity on August 22, 2022. The founding group included Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, as documented in the Perplexity AI entry on Wikipedia. Business Today notes that Yarats previously worked as an artificial intelligence research scientist at Facebook, while Konwinski was a co-founder of Databricks.

Perplexity launched its public search engine on December 7, 2022. Describing the product's underlying concept to UC Berkeley Engineering, Srinivas explained, "From the beginning, Perplexity has been this marriage of Wikipedia and ChatGPT having a baby together." He also told Berkeley Engineering, "I learned that software engineering is critical to doing great work in AI."

For how Perplexity's answers compare with ChatGPT's, see our ChatGPT vs Perplexity for search comparison.

Perplexity Products and Revenue Under Srinivas

Under the leadership of Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity expanded its commercial product suite beyond consumer web search into automated agent systems and browsing software. Perplexity introduced the Comet web browser in July 2025, subsequently making it free to all users in October 2025. In February 2026, Perplexity launched Perplexity Computer, a cloud AI agent, and moved to a subscription-first model.

In January 2026, Perplexity entered into a $750 million Azure cloud services agreement with Microsoft, as reported by Reuters. Current plan prices are in our guide to Perplexity pricing plans.

Reuters, citing The Information, said Perplexity Computer helped lift annualized revenue above $750 million by August 2026.

Financing History and Valuation Benchmarks

Perplexity completed several high-value venture capital rounds between 2024 and 2026, driving its private valuation from early unicorn status past $20 billion. Wikipedia records that Perplexity raised $165 million in April 2024 at a valuation exceeding $1 billion. In June 2025, Perplexity secured $500 million in capital at a $14 billion valuation, followed by a valuation of $20 billion in September 2025.

Wikipedia states that a Series E-6 funding round valued Perplexity at $21.21 billion in early 2026. On August 23, 2026, Reuters reported that Nvidia was in discussions to invest in Perplexity at a valuation exceeding $30 billion, though both Nvidia and Perplexity declined to comment and the transaction remained unconfirmed.

Perplexity also proposed two large deals under Srinivas. In January 2025, Perplexity initiated discussions regarding a proposed merger involving TikTok US to form a new American operating entity. In August 2025, Perplexity submitted an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer to acquire the Google Chrome web browser.

• April 2024: Raised $165 million at a valuation exceeding $1 billion
• June 2025: Raised $500 million at a $14 billion valuation
• September 2025: Reached a private valuation of $20 billion
• Early 2026: Series E-6 round at a $21.21 billion valuation, per Wikipedia
• August 2026: Reported talks with Nvidia on an investment valuing Perplexity above $30 billion (not confirmed closed)

Public Offering Timelines and Industry Comments

Aravind Srinivas has said Perplexity is planning an initial public offering in 2028. During an interview on CNBC on June 8 and June 9, 2026, reported by PYMNTS, he said: "Agnostic of these two companies, we were planning for something in 2028 so that still remains the case."

On the OpenAI and Anthropic listings, he told CNBC: "I think it's important for the AI industry that these IPOs go well, and I actually think they will go well." He also said, "The SpaceX IPO this week will definitely be a leading indicator to how Anthropic or OpenAI will go out."

Srinivas is one of the founders in our list of AI people to watch.

Publisher Copyright Disputes and Content Access

Perplexity faces copyright infringement lawsuits from publishers and media organizations. Wikipedia lists lawsuits against Perplexity brought by The New York Times, Dow Jones, the New York Post, the BBC, and Reddit.

For other AI search engines, see our Perplexity alternatives comparison. Our profile of Winston Weinberg covers the co-founder and CEO of the legal AI company Harvey.

Net Worth Estimates and Angel Investments

The Hurun India Rich List 2025, reported by Business Today on October 1, 2025, valued Srinivas at ₹21,190 crore. The report named Srinivas India's youngest billionaire.

As of October 2026, no named outlet has published a newer net worth figure for Srinivas or a figure in US dollars.

Srinivas is also an angel investor in AI startups. Business Today reported that Srinivas began angel investing in 2023, backing speech synthesis provider ElevenLabs and music generation startup Suno.