Recently, a name has emerged that grabbed global attention — Aravind Srinivas — an Indian-origin engineer and entrepreneur who openly challenged Elon Musk.

On social media platform X Srinivas posted that he plans to raise $500 billion in funding for a project and declared “Stop me if you can.” This bold move quickly went viral making headlines worldwide.

Aravind Srinivas was born in Chennai, India in 1994. Despite being just 30 years old his achievements far surpass his age. He CEO and co-founder of Perplexity an AI-powered search engine.

Unlike traditional search engines like Google or GPT-based tools Perplexity offers precise answers and always cites sources — a significant improvement over existing models.

Aravind’s journey began with a strong academic background. He graduated in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras and later pursued a Ph.D. in Computer Science from California. He worked as a research scientist at DeepMind and OpenAI gaining expertise in AI architecture and development.

In 2022, Aravind launched Perplexity, a revolutionary platform designed to provide fast, accurate answers with credible sources. Unlike GPT which often lacks source verification Perplexity addresses this gap offering more reliable solution. Within two years Perplexity achieved remarkable growth securing a $9 billion valuation by November 2024.

Perplexity’s success was fueled by contributions from former OpenAI employees and investments from major players like New Enterprise Associates, Byra and Amazon. By the end of 2024, the platform had raised nearly $100 million in funding.

Perplexity’s ability to deliver precise, sourced answers and conduct deep research has set it apart as a rapidly rising force in AI search engine industry.

With Google adapting to compete Perplexity continues to expand its user base and revolutionize information retrieval.

What are your thoughts on Aravind Srinivas and his innovative platform Perplexity? Let us know in the comments below!