Bad Times for Perplexity AI Begin
Perplexity AI co-founder Aravind Srinivas is super relaxed and busy with media engagements as the company onboards new gentlemen to the board. Meanwhile, OpenAI experiments with a generative AI search experience, and Google announces several upgrades to Google Search. “Startups have to be aggressive in terms of competing against incumbents who already have, like, a billion users (Google Search). OpenAI has 100 million users. We don’t have that today, so it’s on us to achieve that,” said Srinivas, in a recent interview with Bloomberg. Perplexity AI recently onboarded three industry leaders as new advisors to boost search, mobile and distribution: Emil Michael (ex-Uber), Rich Miner (Android co-founder), and Mikhail Parakhin (ex-Bing CEO). “Parakhin is the world’s leading technical expert on search infrastructure and integrating it with LLMs,” said Srinivas, adding that he has been at the forefront of AI and search, and his expertise will enable them to evolve their core answer engine, build in-house search infrastructure, anticipate new and unexpected challenges, and integrate new AI capabilities. Perplexity has not given up yet: Over the last few weeks, Srinivas and his team have constantly been iterating and shipping products and features faster in an attempt to stay ahead of its competitors, alongside new players emerging in the space who are building similar solutions. Recently, the company partnered with SoundHound AI to Bring LLMs-powered voice assistants to cars and IoT devices. This was announced ahead of the OpenAI Spring Update, which gave the world a glimpse of their—or rather ‘Her’ like—characteristics. At Google I/O, the tech giant also introduced ‘AI Overviews,’ which generates summaries for the queries provided by the user on the go— again similar to Perplexity, but on steroids. But, Srinivas, was quick to point out the drawbacks and limitations of its competitors and said— “When people go to Google, they hate the bad latency, they expect instant rendering of the 10 blue links,” explained Srinivas. He said that Google’s UI is quite cluttered, making people wonder whether they will get token streams as answers, ad-serving links, or some random panel. A Wake-Up Call for Perplexity AI Recently, OpenAI partnered with Reddit to bring enhanced content to ChatGPT and new products, helping users discover and engage with Reddit communities. Interestingly, the company mentioned in the blog post that it will also become a Reddit advertising partner. Surprisingly, OpenAI isn’t planning to charge much from its users and is likely on the path to building its own search engine and monetising it like Google Search. In the latest quarter, Google earned $46.156 billion from Search and related revenues, a 14% increase. To do this, OpenAI will use Reddit’s Data API, which provides real-time, structured, and unique content from Reddit. This will enable OpenAI’s AI tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics. Coincidently, this year Google also partnered with Reddit to use its content available for training Gemini. Not to forget, OpenAI has also entered into content licensing partnerships with publishers including the Associated Press, Axel Springer (Business Insider, Politico, Bild, and Welt), The Financial Times, Le Monde, Prisa Media (El País, Cinco Días, As, and El Huffpost), and Dotdash Meredith (People, Better Homes & Gardens, Investopedia, Food & Wine, and InStyle). In a recent podcast with Lex Fridman, OpenAI chief, Sam Altman said that, “The intersection of LLMs plus search, I don’t think anyone has cracked the code on yet. I would love to go do that. I think that would be cool.” The company also hired Shivakumar Venkataraman,a 21-year Google veteran who previously led the company’s search ads business, as its new vice president. Venkataraman’s extensive experience in search advertising at Google makes him a valuable asset for OpenAI as it plans to build ‘Google Search Alternative’. “We are a business and will find plenty of things to charge for, and that will help us provide free, outstanding AI service to (hopefully) billions of people,” said OpenAI chief Sam Altman in his recent blog post. OpenAI hit the $2 billion revenue milestone in December and the company  believes it can more than double this figure in 2025, based on strong interest from business customers seeking to use its technology to adopt generative AI tools in the workplace. Perplexity AI is competing against the likes of OpenAI and Google at a time when several players are innovating in the AI space. However, Aravind Srinivas, the Co-Founder and CEO of Perplexity AI is up to the challenge. In an interview on Bloomberg TV, Aravind shared his views on several topics. Aravind feels the need to be aggressive as they go against the giants in the Industry. One of his primary objectives is to increase the user base since Google has a billion and OpenAI is up to a 100 million users. Perplexity AI recently onboarded 3 industry leaders to improve their search, mobile and distribution. As Perplexity looks to scale to the next level, Aravind says the integration of AI with search is important along with the need to develop an UI which is less cluttered with minimum latency. He believes that Perplexity should build a product which provides pertinent AI based search responses to all user queries unlike Google’s ad supported model. To execute on their plans to compete against the big players, Aravind acknowledges the need to do more fund raising but they will also be looking to increase revenue and efficiencies. As the  # of queries keeps growing, Perplexity CEO thinks they are very well positioned to compete and become a leading player in the field. Aravind also doesn’t rule out growth thru consolidation. Though there is tough competition in the industry, Aravind is confident that they are doing all the right things to stay ahead!
At Google I/O, the tech giant also introduced ‘AI Overviews,’ which generates summaries for the queries provided by the user on the go— again similar to Perplexity, but on steroids.
Perplexity AI co-founder Aravind Srinivas is super relaxed and busy with media engagements as the company onboards new gentlemen to the board.
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Siddharth is a media graduate who loves to explore tech through journalism and putting forward ideas worth pondering about in the era of artificial intelligence.