Inside The Buzzy AI StartUp Coming For Google's Lunch

Forbes

In August 2022, Aravind Srinivas and Denis Yarats waited outside Meta AI chief Yann LeCun’s office in lower Manhattan for five long hours, skipping lunch for the chance to give the NYU professor a demo of their AI program. Once they showed him how their model could search through platforms like LinkedIn, GitHub and Twitter and surface content that GoogleGOOG -1.8% could not, such as the accounts that most frequently replied to LeCun’s tweets, he was impressed enough with the program’s accuracy to invest.  He was one of several tech VIPs, including Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy and prominent angel investor Elad Gil, who got similar personalized demos — and collectively invested $3.1 million in a September 2022 seed round. “It was very relatable for them to go and search about their own Twitter,” Srinivas told Forbes.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/04/11/inside-the-buzzy-ai-startup-coming-for-googles-lunch/?sh=576d9dbb1781  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00 Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, April 15th.

00:04 Today on Forbes, like Wikipedia and ChatGPT had a kid inside the buzzy AI startup coming

00:12 for Google's lunch.

00:15 In August 2022, Aravind Srinivas and Dinesh Yarat waited outside meta AI chief Jan Lekhan's

00:22 office in lower Manhattan for five long hours, skipping lunch for the chance to give the

00:27 NYU professor a demo of their AI program.

00:31 Once they showed him how their model could search through platforms like LinkedIn, GitHub

00:35 and Twitter and surface content that Google could not, such as the accounts that most

00:40 frequently replied to Lekhan's tweets, he was impressed enough with the program's accuracy

00:45 to invest.

00:47 He was one of several tech VIPs, including Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, former GitHub

00:52 CEO Nat Friedman, OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, and prominent angel investor Elad

00:59 Gill, who got similar personalized demos and collectively invested $3.1 million in a September

01:05 2022 seed round.

01:08 Srinivas told Forbes, "It was very relatable for them to go and search about their own

01:13 Twitter."

01:15 The money gave Srinivas, Yarat, and fellow co-founders Andrew Konwinski and Johnny Ho

01:20 the runway to find an inventive way to bring AI to search.

01:24 After trying out several ideas, they landed on what is now Perplexity, an AI-based conversational

01:30 search engine used by about 15 million people to source and summarize information on any

01:35 topic on the Internet, from the best date night restaurants to white elephant gift exchange

01:40 ideas to the cheapest sneakers for sale online.

01:44 Featured in Forbes' 2024 AI50 list, which was just released last week, Perplexity provides

01:49 succinct answers in four to five sentences along with citations and links to sources

01:54 by routing millions of questions to a medley of large language models, including Anthropx

02:00 Clawed, OpenAI's GPT 3.5 and GPT 4, and open source models like Meta's Lama and Mistral's

02:07 Mixtral.

02:08 Srinivas, who is 29 years old and who serves as Perplexity's CEO, said, "It's almost like

02:14 Wikipedia and ChatGPT had a kid."

02:19 In less than two years, the buzzy AI startup has raised $102 million in venture capital

02:25 from some of the most notable names in tech, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, former

02:30 YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit, Shopify CEO Toby Luka, and

02:37 former Microsoft president Bob Muglia.

02:40 The roster of prominent backers has helped the startup, now valued at $1 billion, gain

02:45 credibility and momentum while attracting top talent, more investors, and more importantly,

02:51 millions of users, among them billionaires like NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who uses Perplexity

02:57 every day, and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell.

03:01 Srinivas told Forbes, "It creates snowball effects for you.

03:05 People take you more seriously."

03:08 Since launching in December 2022, Perplexity's usage has been on a steep upward climb.

03:14 Some 100,000 users pay a $20 monthly subscription fee to access advanced features on the platform,

03:20 such as searching their own uploaded files and generating images and text from scratch.

03:26 Perplexity users can also create their own so-called AI profile by adding information

03:30 like their occupation, location, likes and dislikes to get personalized answers and suggestions.

03:37 It also lets people restrict their searches to specific databases, including academic

03:41 journals, YouTube, and Reddit.

03:44 The startup, which has about $20 million in annual recurring revenue, is considering adding

03:49 native ads into the product by letting brands influence some of its related questions/suggestions.

03:55 But it still faces the trillion-dollar behemoth that is Google, which remains the first place

04:01 billions of people go looking for information.

04:04 There's still a lot of questions that Google answers better than AI search engines like

04:08 Perplexity, like suggesting what shows or movies to watch or accurately answering questions

04:13 about a recent football game.

04:15 Plus, the tech giant has a two-decade head start on indexing and scraping the web.

04:20 Chernivus said, "You can never succeed at recreating the whole index like Google.

04:25 It's too late.

04:26 It's sort of like finding your way in a maze where you're starting at a huge disadvantage."

04:32 But Chernivus is optimistic because he doesn't see Perplexity as competing directly with

04:36 Google.

04:37 Instead, he hopes that more and more people will turn to Perplexity to find nugget-sized

04:41 information to make quick decisions, rather than being served with 10 rows of blue links.

04:48 Perplexity especially shines for retrieving information that's buried deep within different

04:51 websites, like instructions on tasks like how to renew a passport, or summarizing long

04:56 passages of text like news articles.

04:59 Chernivus said, "Our success doesn't rely on Google's failure at all.

05:04 People can use Google and Perplexity at the same time."

05:09 For full coverage, you can watch our video interview with Aravind Chernivus and check

05:13 out Rashi Srivastava's piece on Forbes.com.

05:17 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.

05:20 Thanks for tuning in.

05:21 [MUSIC PLAYING]

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