Who Is Aravind Srinivas, CEO Who Has Challenged Elon Musk Over USAID

Aravind Srinivas, the Indian-origin CEO of the AI search engine Perplexity AI, is not new to controversies. Recently, he challenged his Tesla counterpart Elon Musk to “stop” him if he can from raising a mammoth sum from the federal agency.

“Considering raising $500B from USAID. Funding secured. Stop me if you can @elonmusk What is USAID?” Mr Srinivas posted on X.

The post came days after US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk called for shutting down the federal agency. 

On Friday, a federal judge ordered a temporary pause to the administration’s plan to put 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave.

Who Is Aravind Srinivas

Aravind Srinivas is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, an AI-powered search engine backed by prominent investors, including Jeff Bezos. 

Founded in 2022, Perplexity AI was established by Mr Srinivas alongside Andy Konwinski, Denis Yarats, and Johnny Ho.

Aravind Srinivas is an alumnus of IIT-Madras, who completed his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Mr Srinivas began his career as a research intern at OpenAI, later holding similar roles at major tech companies like Google and DeepMind.

Before co-founding Perplexity AI, he returned to OpenAI as a research scientist.