Aravind Srinivas looked up to Google CEO Sundar Pichai before building Perplexity AI; how an unexpected detail stayed with him

Aravind Srinivas looked up to Google CEO Sundar Pichai before building Perplexity AI; how an unexpected detail stayed with him

By Shivam Verma
Publication Date: 2026-10-28 19:27:00

Aravind Srinivas is the CEO of Perplexity AI. Not many people know that he used to admire Google CEO Sundar Pichai before building an AI-powered platform that would go on to compete with Google. According to a report by WIRED, Srinivas revealed that he watched a YouTube video about Pichai.

What did Srinivas talk about?

Srinivas said he watched an interview of Pichai where he discussed his morning routine, including reading newspapers, drinking tea and eating an omelette.

Srinivas grew up in a vegetarian household and shared that interview with his mother while trying to convince her to let him eat eggs.

ALSO READ: Meet Joe Demin and Rachel Connors, a couple who started selling hammocks in 2011; here’s how their side hustle crossed $30 million in sales

All about Aravind Srinivas

He grew up in Chennai and studied electrical engineering at IIT Madras and earned a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. Before he started Perplexity, he worked at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. There, he gained experience in artificial intelligence research.


Aravind Srinivas co-founded Perplexity AI in 2022 with Andy Konwinski, Denis Yarats and Johnny Ho. They initially experimented with tools that allowed users to search Twitter data through natural-language questions. They later shifted towards general web search.

ALSO READ: Meet Scott Heimendinger, the Seattle inventor who spent six years developing a $399 ultrasonic kitchen knife; what it does and how it…