Aravind Srinivas is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Perplexity AI, the San Francisco-based AI search company he launched in 2022. Srinivas holds a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley and previously conducted AI research at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Google Brain before founding Perplexity with Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski.
Srinivas has positioned Perplexity as a direct challenger to traditional search engines, arguing that AI-native answer engines with source citation represent a fundamentally better approach to online research than link-based search results. He has become one of the youngest prominent billionaires in the AI industry as Perplexity's valuation has grown rapidly through 2026.