ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Perplexity Founder & CEO Aravind Srinivas believes the next wave of American economic growth could come from smaller, AI-native businesses, not just the largest technology companies.
Perplexity, valued at ~$20B with more than $2B in reported funding and backing from NVIDIA, SoftBank, IVP, NEA, Accel, Jeff Bezos, and Elad Gil, has evolved from an AI answer engine into a platform for autonomous agents, research, and knowledge work.
I sat down with Aravind at Perplexity's new San Francisco headquarters to discuss the economics of AI, the future of entrepreneurship, and why agents could enable a generation of smaller, more profitable companies.
Aravind reveals that Perplexity's revenue is growing 5x year over year, enterprise adoption is accelerating, and one solopreneur is spending over $1M annually on Perplexity Computer while generating $3M in annual revenue.
We also explore Perplexity's bet on local AI, its work with NVIDIA and Apple, and why the company has no plans to build its own data centers despite the massive infrastructure buildout underway.
Aravind Srinivas: https://x.com/AravSrinivas
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea
Sourcery: https://x.com/sourceryy
𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊
YouTube: https://youtu.be/1C8_n9nnx5Y
𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery
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• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery
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Disclosure:
Paid Ad. Agents are an experimental AI tool. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public Holding’s, Inc. makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. Brokerage accounts and services provided by Open to the Public Investing, Inc. See additional disclosures at https://public.com/disclosures/agenticdisclosures.
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Aravind Srinivas, Co-founder & CEO of Perplexity
(01:30) Why Perplexity's brand is built on curiosity
(08:18) How to build a $1T company in America alone
(13:45) Is the American dream still alive?
(16:28) Stop blaming users for bad prompts
(22:55) How Perplexity quietly grew 5x
(28:28) "We don't have competitors, we have contributors"
(29:20) The data center is coming to your laptop
(34:32) Orchestrating up with NVIDIA, down with Apple
(39:17) Why Perplexity is skipping the data center race
(41:25) Stop asking AI to write code, ask it to think
(48:27) The Hugging Face incident & multi-agent threats
(53:31) Why Perplexity isn’t chasing a billion users
