In August 2022, Aravind Srinivas — fresh from a PhD at UC Berkeley with research stints at OpenAI, Google Brain, and DeepMind — co-founded Perplexity AI with three other deeply technical co-founders: Denis Yarats (PhD from NYU, ex-Meta FAIR), Johnny Ho (world #1 competitive programmer, ex-Quora), and Andy Konwinski (Databricks founding team).

Launching 7 Days After ChatGPT

Perplexity's answer engine launched on December 7, 2022 — exactly one week after ChatGPT shocked the world. While everyone was marveling at ChatGPT's conversational ability, Perplexity bet on something different: AI-powered search with citations. Every answer came with sources you could verify.

Ship Fast with Tiny Teams

Perplexity's development velocity was unusual even by startup standards. Features were routinely built by teams of 2-3 people. Many shipped during one-week hackathons. The Pro Search feature — their premium tier's key differentiator — was prototyped in just a few days. Aravind's philosophy: "Our competition isn't even Google — it's user awareness."

Twitter as a Growth Engine

They created @AskPerplexity, a Twitter bot users could tag to get AI-powered answers. In one week it generated 12 million organic impressions. Aravind himself became one of AI's most prominent voices on Twitter, sharing product updates and engaging with the community directly.

Zero-Friction Onboarding

Unlike ChatGPT (which required signup), Perplexity let anyone search immediately without creating an account. This zero-friction approach drove massive organic adoption.

• Founded: August 2022
• Launched: December 7, 2022
• 2M monthly active users: March 2023
• $35M ARR: Mid-2024
• $100M ARR: March 2025
• $200M ARR: September 2025
• Valuation: $20B (September 2025)