Aravind Srinivas

Sourcery · Perplexity CEO: SMBs Could Drive the Next Economic Boom

• What Still Stops Perplexity From Making Scientists?

  Aravind Srinivas wants to push past web lookups into longer research tasks. Some questions have no known answers, and he would let AIs help find them. He says some of it may involve prediction models, experiments in the world, real-time hypothesis testing, and refining a hypothesis. If Perplexity can help a person test ideas in the real world, everyone can turn into a scientist. He calls real-world testing the only bottleneck for a scientist, and he calls the result the dream.

  Molly O'Shea asked about the biggest challenge to date. Aravind Srinivas said capabilities. The models are not truly long horizon, persistent, and parallel. No frontier model can do its own research end to end, autono

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• Why Is Writing Code Almost Solved?

  Aravind Srinivas says the rise of NEO cloud shows the demand for tokens and agents is there, and he calls the demand a good problem. If everybody tries to build another NEO cloud, he says, there is not actually any differentiation. He says maybe some NEO clouds differentiate each other by their own power or by software they can run on top. Even so, he says it is just yet another thing. While everybody searches the same market, he says they are trying to build their own market, which is why he likes to think they have no competitor.

  Number one, they are not going after coding just like everybody. Aravind Srinivas says the bottleneck is not in producing more code. He thinks most of the best e

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• Why Is Perplexity Not Building Data Centers?

  Molly O'Shea asked whether Perplexity will open its own data centers anytime soon. Aravind Srinivas says Perplexity has no plans to build them. While other companies head in that direction, he wants to use the gigawatts of power already in homes, offices, and devices.

  He says devices already hold a lot of RAM, and homes and offices already hold a lot of power. Perplexity wants to tap into that and be the best orchestrator. Aravind Srinivas says Perplexity is not betting against the cloud or against data centers. He thinks the products will increase demand for data centers. Enough people are already building them, and he says the shortage is on permits, HPM supply, grid access, and a long wa

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• Why Does Only America Back Outsiders?

  Aravind Srinivas says a massive opportunity exists for an outsider in America that does not exist in any other country. He cannot think of another country where an outsider can arrive, want to improve things, and find people who do more than grant permission. They invest, share the profits, and feel part of the journey when hard problems get solved. He calls the spirit of backing risk with venture capital or friends and family capital uniquely American.

  Silicon Valley, he says, is the American dream showing up as tech entrepreneurship. The dream is the chance to solve really hard problems and be rewarded no matter who you are, and the chance still excites him. He still thinks America is the

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• Why Does Perplexity Build Its Brand on Curiosity?

  Aravind Srinivas says Perplexity's brand is fundamentally to celebrate curiosity. He picked curiosity because he thinks it will be the only quality human beings can be proud of and lean into even more as AIs get better. He says you could argue that AI is the best accelerant of human curiosity, and almost the purpose of AI is to accelerate human curiosity.

  Srinivas cites David Deutsch, the famous Oxford physicist, for the idea that human beings are the only species capable of being curious about what is already familiar. People might know something, look at it again, and think about it from a different perspective. Animals do not tend to do that. Srinivas says AIs can solve all the problems

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