Meet Perplexity’s Aravind Srinivas who seeks to acquire Google Chrome with jaw-dropping USD 34.5 billion offer
Aravind Srinivas worked as an intern under deep learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, which was followed by his PhD at UC Berkeley in Artificial Intelligence.
By making an USD 34.5 billion offer to buy Google Chrome, Perplexity AI’s founder Aravind Srinivas has hogged limelight. Srinivas has become a common name in the AI domain, as he made headlines by cracking a deal with Bharti Airtel, which ensured free membership to Perplexity Pro for an entire year. Aravind Srinivas is an Indian-origin co-founder of Perplexity, with other founding members being Johnny Ho, Denis Yarats, and Andy Konwinski.
Srinivas has made inroads in the already competitive AI market, successfully positioning his search engine as one of the top competitors to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Who Is Aravind Srinivas?
Aravind Srinivas, who took inspiration from her mother’s suggestion, attended IIT Madras. He graduated with double degrees in Electrical Engineering in the year 2017. His passion for machine learning faced some obstacles as he was required to switch to computer science to pursue his dreams, which was not possible. However, he was passionate enough to self-teach Python and excel in Kaggle competitions.
He also worked as an intern under deep learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, which was followed by his PhD at UC Berkeley in Artificial Intelligence.
His company’s offer to acquire Google Chrome has created waves in the tech sector. The offer comes while the browser is not actively looking for buyers. Notably, Perplexity’s own valuation stands at USD 14 billion and it has made an offer of more than twice of what it holds. The offer is being seen as Perplexity’s bid to make a stronghold in the AI domain.
Offer To Merge With TikTok
Known for making bold moves, Perplexity last year made an offer to merge with TikTok’s US business as it sought to address concerns regarding the social media site’s Chinese ownership. If Perplexity’s offer to purchase Chrome bears fruition, it will give the company a huge platform to leverage Chrome’s estimated three billion users, enabling it to compete with its rival competitors like OpenAI.
The offer becomes significant for the fact that it comes amidst Google Chrome facing legal pressure in the United States over its dominance in the online search. However, the possibility of Chrome being compelled into a new ownership is slim.
How Perplexity Plans To Manage Funds
Perplexity, despite being only a three-year-old venture, has emerged as a disruptor to reckon with in the tech world. While it has not revealed how it will manage to finance USD 34.5 billion, it has hinted that it has received offers from several unnamed investment funds to cover the full amount.
As per the latest update, Perplexity has been able to generate about USD 1 billion from several investors, including Japan’s SoftBank and Nvidia.
Meanwhile, along with Perplexity, OpenAI has also shown interest in acquiring Google Chrome. OpenAI approached the browser in 2023 to get access to its search API to be used by ChatGPT. However, Google declined the offer as it cited competitive concerns. The company, since then, has relied on Microsoft’s Bing to power its chatbot’s search features.