If Aravind Srinivasan had received the answers he wanted from Google Search when he first started his company, the now $18 billion AI search service Perplexity might never have emerged, thus threatening a business that contributes over 50% of Google's revenue.
In 2022, when Srinivasan and two co-founders started their venture, they were still undecided about what exactly to do, but they hired an engineer first. The engineer needed health insurance, but Srinivasan, new to running a company, had no concept of how to go about it, so he did what many people do when faced with questions: he asked Google.
However, he was disappointed by the results from Google Search, which were filled with ads from insurance companies, and the top-ranked search results were optimized marketing content that could not resolve his queries. Coincidentally, one of the entrepreneurial directions they were considering at that time was to utilize AI search services with large language models, leading him to ask the AI at hand, which indeed helped him find a suitable insurance company and solidified his entrepreneurial direction.
In just under three years, Perplexity has developed into a unicorn valued at $18 billion, with over 22 million monthly active users, considered one of the leading companies in the current AI race.
Who is the founder of Perplexity? Why did he want to create an AI search service?
Srinivasan is a top AI researcher, graduating with a PhD from Berkeley, with experience interning at Google and OpenAI. After working at OpenAI for a year, he resigned to start his own venture.
According to (India Times), Srinivasan came from an ordinary family in India. Although he showed a talent for mathematics from a young age, ironically, he could not enter a computer science program in college due to low scores. Nevertheless, he self-taught Python, participated in online AI courses and competitions, ultimately earning a PhD in computer science from Berkeley.
Srinivasan began questioning traditional search engines during his doctoral studies: Since computers can understand user queries and provide answers, why should users sift through link after link to find solutions themselves?
It is worth mentioning that despite questioning search engines, he did not initially intend to go against Google; rather, he admired Google. Google CEO Sundar Pichai is from the same hometown as him—both hail from Chennai, and he can be considered his idol. The story of Google's founding fascinated him during his student years and ignited his entrepreneurial spirit.
(Fortune) pointed out that although he experienced the capabilities of large language models during his time at OpenAI, he quickly decided not to develop his own model when starting his company. He clearly understood that a cash-strapped startup had no funds to train a model and recognized that how to monetize AI applications would become the next battleground.
"Currently, there are already five or six companies building their own AI models," Srinivasan stated, "so we did not want to become just another company building AI models."
Srinivasan launched the AI search service Perplexity seven days after ChatGPT went online, initially supporting various GPT models. Perplexity can search online data, organize and summarize the information found, digesting it into a more understandable and clearer presentation for users, along with the sources of each piece of information.
In contrast, the original ChatGPT did not have internet connectivity and could only retrieve answers from training data, thus unable to provide users with the latest information, naturally lacking citation sources, which made the "hallucination" problem frequently criticized. Although Perplexity cannot completely eliminate hallucinations, providing citation sources can reduce the likelihood of them occurring and make it easier for users to detect inaccuracies in the answers.
Since its launch, Perplexity has received excellent reviews within the industry, which can perhaps be seen from its investor composition. In addition to venture capitalists, industry figures such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, and Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun are among the investors.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has publicly stated that Perplexity is his favorite chatbot, which he uses almost every day.
Can a small ant topple an elephant? Srinivasan believes the time to disrupt Google has come.
As a disruptor in search services, Srinivasan is well aware that Google will be Perplexity's biggest competitor. He was psychologically prepared, believing that Google would soon imitate them and launch AI search; however, this did not happen, and Google Search largely maintained its previous form because search ads contributed most of Google's revenue. In the latest financial report, Google Search ad revenue reached $54.1 billion, accounting for 56% of total revenue.
However, Google continues to gradually transform its search services, having launched AI summaries last year, which can provide answers to users first in some searches. At this year's Google I/O developer conference, Google introduced an AI Mode search feature to further align the user experience with AI.
Although Perplexity cannot yet compare with Google, who is the eternal leader?
Various studies suggest that platforms like TikTok, focusing on AI, will continue to carve away at Google's search service market share. For example, eMarketer estimates that by 2025, Google's market share in search advertising in the US will fall below 50% for the first time, although Google still remains an unparalleled leader.
Although Perplexity is considered a powerful new contender to disrupt Google Search, the scale of the two remains vastly different. (Fortune) noted that Perplexity had a query volume of 780 million in May this year, while Google's traffic during the same period reached a staggering 83.3 billion.
One of Google's major advantages is its vast ecosystem, which allows it to understand user preferences through a multitude of services like Chrome, Gmail, Android, Google Maps, and Workspace, making it easier for users to opt for Google Search. Google spends tens of billions of dollars annually to maintain its status as the default search engine on iPhones; between 2020 and 2023, it paid Samsung about $8 billion for this.
Perplexity also hopes to bridge this gap. The recently launched AI browser Comet is the first step. Perplexity's Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko stated, "The browser is where we spend all day on desktop devices; it is like an incredibly powerful canvas."
Currently, Perplexity's major challenge is that, despite receiving industry acclaim, their recognition is far from sufficient. Not only are there few users who have experienced AI search, but consumers still trust the information provided by Google Search more.
Their next step is to build brand recognition, with the goal of becoming the default service for various mobile brands. They have already partnered with Motorola to become the default service for models like Rzar and Edge 60, offering users three months of subscription service for free. Additionally, there are reports that Perplexity is in talks for similar collaborations with Samsung.
Compared to Google, Perplexity is just a small ant, and some experts believe that their best outcome would be to be embraced by Apple, which has been rumored to be in talks for acquisition. The chances of toppling Google seem slim. However, Srinivasan remains firm in the face of doubts, as his life has been about breaking through imagination; being born into a lower-middle-class family with no connections, and even not studying computer science in college due to low scores did not stop him from building Perplexity, making him one of the most influential leaders in the AI industry today.
"We are at a unique moment in history," Srinivasan believes the time to disrupt Google has come. "The best technologies have always existed within Google, where they have built a massive business around ten blue links. But now with Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta's Llama, the tools to build answer engines are outside of Google."
This article is authorized for reprint from: (Digital Age)
Original title: (Perplexity Founder Reveals: No Connections, Self-Taught to Enter the AI World, How Did He Build the 'Thorn in Google's Side'?)
Original author: Chen Jianjun
'Perplexity Founder Reveals: No Connections Yet Entering the AI Realm, How Did He Build a Thorn in Google's Side?' This article was first published in 'Crypto City.'