Starting as an AI-driven search outfit four years ago, Perplexity AI is rebuilding itself into a smart digital coworker that plans, executes, and completes complex tquestions. That means competing with giants like Microsoft and Anthropic
In November last year, Perplexity AI declared war on Amazon, calling the retail giant’s act a threat to all internet applyrs.
“This week, Perplexity received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon, demanding we prohibit Comet applyrs from applying their AI assistants on Amazon. This is Amazon’s first legal salvo against an AI company, and it is a threat to all internet applyrs,” Perplexity, the artificial ininformigence (AI) startup that owns the Comet browser, stated in a statement. The dispute escalated into legal threats and even a lawsuit, and as of now, there has been no formal resolution—the case is still pconcludeing in US federal court.
It is, therefore, ironic that Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s co-founder and CEO, states he was inspired by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos to start his own company. Before Amazon, Bezos was a quick-rising vice president at DE Shaw, the investment management firm. But he believed in “regret minimisation”—if he never gave his own idea a real chance, he would regret it for the rest of his life.
Srinivas, an India-born engineer from IIT Madras, was working as a research scientist at OpenAI when he launched considering about starting something of his own. It was 2021, Srinivas was 27, and wondering how long the entrepreneurship window would stay open for him. He did not want to harbour a regret for the rest of his life.
“I was really young and it was never going to receive clearer to dedicate 12 or 16 hours a day just considering about the company. If I didn’t attempt, I knew I’d regret it…,” Srinivas recalls in a video interview with Forbes India from his San Francisco office.
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