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Perplexity's Founder Was Inspired by Sundar Pichai. Now They’re Competing to Reinvent Search

Wired · 8m

Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity AI, credits Google CEO Sundar Pichai for inspiring him to start eating eggs. Srinivas, a vegetarian from India, saw a video of Pichai casually describing his morning routine, which included eating an omelet. This small interaction sparked admiration and later turned into rivalry as Srinivas grew in his career. He eventually joined Google as a research intern and later co-founded Perplexity, a search engine powered by generative AI that aims to disrupt Google's dominance. Perplexity has raised $100 million in funding and boasts 15 million active users. Srinivas sees a chance to compete with Google by leveraging AI technology developed by other companies like OpenAI and Meta. However, Perplexity's biggest challenge is gaining user awareness and trust. Srinivas envisions a future where Perplexity could incorporate advertising but with better targeting enabled by generative AI.