What is Perplexity AI: Founders and Company Details

• Home
• /
• Knowledge Base
• /
• Post
• /
• Public Awareness
• /
• What is Perplexity AI: Founders and Company Details

What is Perplexity AI: Founders and Company Details

Perplexity AI, Inc. is an American privately held software company founded in 2022. It is based in San Francisco, USA. It is known for Perplexity AI - a web search engine that is capable of processing user queries and synthesizing responses. In this blog post, we shall explain what perplexity AI is, its founders and company details. 

What is Perplexity AI: Explained

Perplexity AI is an Artificial Intelligence-powered conversational search engine. It synthesizes information via internet and provides direct, well-generated responses to its users. This is in contrast to traditional search engines that list links that users need to click on manually and read through the content to synthesize information themselves. 

Perplexity platform makes use of large language models and comes with real-time web search capabilities, allowing it to provide answers based on the latest internet content. The responses that this tool generates come with citations from internet sources. This helps the users to verify the information easily.

Although Perplexity offers a free public version, the paid Pro subscription offers access to more advanced features. In July 2025, the AI company launched Comet - a Chromium-based AI browser. The value of the software company is $18 billion (as of July 2025).

Perplexity AI Founders

The founders of Perplexity AI are Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinski. A brief description of each one of them is provided below:

1. Aravind Srinivas

Aravind Srinivas is an Indian computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is famous for being Perplexity’s CEO and co-founder. He was born in a Tamil Family, in Madras (now known as Chennai). From Indian Institute of Technology Madras, one of the most prestigious institutes in India, he earned dual degrees, i.e., a B.Tech and an M.Tech, in electrical engineering.    Later on, he went to the USA to pursue a PhD in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Time Magazine named him one of the “TIME100 Most Influential People in AI” in 2024.

2. Johnny Ho 

Johnny Ho is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Perplexity. He leads the product development team of Perplexity. Prior to founding the AI platform, he worked as a high-frequency trader at Tower Research Capital. He also worked as an engineer at Quora.    Also, Johnny is a former competitive programmer and a three-time gold medalist at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). In 2012, he achieved a perfect score and ranked first in the world at the IOI. He holds a degree in mathematics and computer science from Harvard University. Currently, he is based in New York City.

3. Andy Konwinski

Andy Konwinski is one of the co-founders of Perplexity. He is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He co-founded Databricks - a global data and AI platform. He is also known for his contributions to Apache Spark -  an open-source unified analytics engine for large-scale data processing.    Apart from this, he also founded Laude Ventures - an early-stage venture capital firm, and Laude Institute - a Non-Profit Institute for computer science researchers. His work effectively combines research with real-world deployment when it comes to artificial intelligence and software infrastructure.

4. Denis Yarats

Denis Yarats is the co-founder and chief technology officer at Perplexity. His previous role was AI Research Scientist at Facebook. He is an angel investor in Cognition Labs (Devin), Cursor, AthinaAI and Animation Inc.  He attended the New York University where he completed PhD in Artificial Intelligence, with research focused on Reinforcement Learning and Natural Language Processing.

Perplexity’s Bid to Acquire Google Chrome

In August 2025, Perplexity made a substantial bid of $34.5 billion to acquire Google Chrome. The offer is worth more than Perplexity’s own value of $18 billion. This offer has drawn attention all across the world, not only because of its size but also because of Chrome’s importance. 

Chrome is a web browser with over 3 billion users across the world. It serves as a critical gateway to Google’s search, cloud and advertising services. For a 3 year old Artificial Intelligence company to make such a proposal is certainly uncommon and has sparked widespread debate in tech circles. 

It raises questions regarding competition, innovation, antitrust regulations and whether AI startups can realistically challenge the well-known tech giants within digital ecosystems.

Conclusion

Perplexity AI is one of the most popular AI tools in 2025. It was founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinski. Perplexity allows the users to get quick responses to their queries and also cites sources for verification purposes. As of July 2025, the value of this software company is $18 billion. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1. What is the net worth of Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas?

A. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas’s net worth is approx. $1 billion, as of July 2025.

Q2. Where did Aravind Srinivas complete his B.Tech and an M.Tech from?

A. He completed his B.Tech and an M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

Q3. When was Perplexity AI founded?

A. It was founded in the year 2022.

Q4. Who is the Chief Strategy Officer of Perplexity?

A. Johnny Ho is the Chief Strategy Officer of Perplexity. He is also one of the co-founders of the company.

Q5. What is the value of Perplexity?

A. The value of Perplexity is $18, as of July 2025.

Q6. Who are the Board Members and Advisors at Perplexity?

A. Perplexity's board members and advisors are: Peter Sonsini, Cack Wilhelm, Denis Yarats, Andrew D. Konwinski, Joshua Muller and Aravind Srinivas Lakshminarayanan.

• 6036 views