From Chennai to the global AI stage
Aravind Srinivas, a 31-year-old tech entrepreneur from Chennai, has carved a remarkable path in the artificial intelligence world. After co-founding Perplexity AI, his company has propelled him into the limelight on the M3M Hurun India Rich List 2025 as the youngest Indian billionaire. With a net worth estimated at around ₹21,190 crore, Srinivas’s ascent highlights the rapid rise of Indian innovators in the global AI economy.
Early life, education, and a thirst for discovery
Born on June 7, 1994, in Tamil Nadu, Srinivas displayed a keen interest in science from a young age. He studied at IIT Madras, where his focus extended beyond coursework to advanced topics in reinforcement learning (RL). His classroom and research interests evolved into a broader pursuit of AI, culminating in a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral work spanned computer vision, including contrastive learning, RL, image generation, image recognition, and transformer-based models for video generation, signaling a hybrid expertise across perception and decision-making in machines.
Building a career at the frontier of AI
Before stepping into entrepreneurship, Srinivas built a robust research and industry background. He contributed to RL and related disciplines at OpenAI, then focused on contrastive learning at DeepMind in London. His journey also included time at Google, where he contributed to the development of vision architectures such as HaloNet and ResNet-RS. Returning to OpenAI as a research scientist, he played a role in advancing text-to-image capabilities that fed into the evolution of DALL-E 2, a pivotal milestone in AI-enabled creativity and generation.
Perplexity AI: democratizing fast, reliable AI-powered search
In August 2022, Srinivas co-founded Perplexity AI, a company aimed at delivering fast, accurate, and reliable answers through an AI-powered chat-search experience. The startup quickly positioned itself as a contender in the AI-enabled search space, leveraging advances in language models and vision techniques to improve information retrieval and user understanding. By early 2023, Srinivas had also begun making strategic investments in other AI ventures, including ElevenLabs (voice tech) and Suno (text-to-music), underscoring a broader commitment to cultivating a diversified AI ecosystem through angel investments.
Why the market is buzzing: a young founder in a high-growth category
Srinivas’s recognition on the Hurun list is more than a personal milestone; it underscores a broader shift in India’s tech landscape. His trajectory demonstrates how younger founders are leading the charge in AI research, product development, and scalable business models. Perplexity AI’s growth, the attention of global tech giants, and the potential for India to become a major hub for AI engineering and research are all part of the conversation this milestone has sparked.
Future plans: scaling in India and beyond
With Perplexity AI gaining momentum, Srinivas has signaled ambitious strategic moves. Plans include expanding product development and data science capabilities, potentially establishing an AI engineering hub in Bengaluru or Hyderabad. He has also hinted at partnerships spanning travel, retail, education, and healthcare—sectors where AI can enhance decision support, personalization, and efficiency. Further, the creation of a dedicated Perplexity Fund reflects a broader strategy to fuel technology innovation and India-centric growth opportunities.
Impact on India’s AI ecosystem
Aravind Srinivas’s ascent offers a compelling narrative for India’s AI ecosystem: a young, homegrown leader driving pioneering work, attracting global capital, and shaping a new generation of engineers and researchers. His success story—and the broader momentum around Perplexity AI—adds to the dialogue about talent development, investment, and the regulatory and educational frameworks needed to sustain rapid innovation.
