Aravind Srinivas, founder of the $18 billion AI search company Perplexity, says his business was born from a simple problem: Google didn't help when he needed it.

In 2022. starting his first company, Srinivas needed health insurance for his first engineer. He turned to Google. "The top results were all ads," Srinivas recalls. "The other links were marketing pages, not answers." Frustrated, he asked an early AI language model instead. It gave him the clear information he needed instantly. That moment shaped Perplexity.

Srinivas, a top AI researcher with a PhD from UC Berkeley and experience at OpenAI and Google, had long questioned traditional search. "Why make people click through links," he asked, "when computers can understand the question and give the answer directly?"

Despite admiring Google and its CEO Sundar Pichai (a fellow native of Chennai, India), Srinivas saw a gap. While at OpenAI, he saw the power of large language models (LLMs) but knew his startup couldn't afford to build one. "Five or six companies were already making models," he states. "We didn't want to be just another one."

Just seven days after ChatGPT launched, Perplexity arrived. It searches the web, summarizes answers in clear language, and shows where the information came from. This contrasts with early ChatGPT, which couldn't access the latest web info and sometimes gave wrong answers ("hallucinations"). Perplexity's sources help users check facts.

The service quickly impressed tech leaders. Investors include Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's top scientist Jeff Dean, and Meta's AI chief Yann LeCun. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang calls Perplexity his favorite chatbot, using it almost daily.

Perplexity directly challenges Google Search, which brings in over 50% of Google's money ($54.1 billion last quarter). Srinivas expected Google to quickly copy Perplexity's AI approach. While Google has started adding AI summaries and an "AI Mode," its main search page looks much the same.

The difference in scale is huge. Perplexity handled 78 million searches in May 2025. Google handled 83.3 billion in the same period. Google's vast ecosystem – Chrome, Gmail, Android, Maps – gives it deep user knowledge. It also pays billions to be the default search on phones like the iPhone and Samsung devices.

Perplexity's next challenge is getting known. Most people haven't tried AI search and still trust Google. To grow, Perplexity aims to be a default option on phones. It recently partnered with Motorola for its Razr and Edge 60 models, offering users three free months. Talks with Samsung are reported.

Facing a giant like Google, some experts think Perplexity's best future might be being bought by a company like Apple. Srinivas disagrees. He points out he built Perplexity despite starting with no connections, failing to get into computer science at university in India, and teaching himself coding.

"We are at a unique moment," Srinivas insists. "The best tools for building answer engines are now outside Google – like from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta's Llama. The time to change search is now."