Meet Aravind Srinivas: From Chennai to Silicon Valley, the tech visionary eyeing TikTok

Aravind Srinivas, an Indian-American computer scientist and entrepreneur, has been making waves in the world of artificial intelligence. Born on 7 June 1994 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Srinivas is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, a company focused on building a conversational answer engine that prioritises trust and accuracy.

Srinivas’s journey into the tech world began with his early passion for science and technology. He pursued a dual degree in Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras, graduating in 2017. While there, he delved into advanced concepts like reinforcement learning and transfer learning, laying the foundation for his work in AI. He later moved to the United States to complete a PhD in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research at Berkeley focused on areas like computer vision, contrastive learning, and the use of transformer models for generating images and videos, earning him recognition in academic circles.

After completing his studies, Srinivas gained valuable industry experience through internships at some of the biggest names in AI. In 2018, he joined OpenAI to tackle reinforcement learning challenges. A year later, he worked at DeepMind in London, where he focused on contrastive learning techniques. Between 2020 and 2021, he was at Google, contributing to the development of cutting-edge vision models like HaloNet and ResNet-RS.

Following his PhD, Srinivas returned to OpenAI as a research scientist. He was part of the team behind DALL-E 2, a revolutionary text-to-image generator that became a major milestone in the field of generative AI.

In August 2022, Srinivas co-founded Perplexity AI with Denis Yarats, a former Facebook AI scientist, and Andy Konwinski, co-founder of DataBricks. Perplexity AI built an AI-powered chat-based search engine that answers user queries directly. By using advanced models like GPT-3, the platform aims to make information access faster, more reliable, and user-friendly.

Beyond his work at Perplexity AI, Srinivas has been actively contributing to the broader AI community. Since 2023, he has been an angel investor, supporting startups working on innovative AI technologies. His portfolio includes companies like ElevenLabs, which specialises in text-to-speech tools, and Suno, which is developing text-to-music platforms.

Srinivas’s entrepreneurial journey has been partly inspired by Sundar Pichai, another Chennai-born tech leader and the CEO of Google. Pichai’s career had a significant influence on Srinivas, especially in shaping his interest in search technologies and their potential to improve how people interact with information.

In early 2025, Srinivas and Perplexity AI made headlines again with an ambitious merger proposal involving ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. The plan includes creating a new U.S.-based holding company, provisionally named “NewCo,” to take over TikTok’s U.S. operations. The proposal suggests that the U.S. government could own up to 50% of the new company after an IPO valued at $300 billion. ByteDance would retain control of TikTok’s core recommendation algorithm, while existing TikTok investors would hold equity in NewCo. This move is seen as an effort to resolve national security concerns surrounding TikTok in the U.S.

If the deal goes through, Srinivas could find himself leading one of the most significant social media platforms, further cementing his role as a key player in the tech world.