Aravind Srinivas: From Family Accountant to AI Pioneer

Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity, recently shared an interesting fact: he is the first engineer in his large family. He revealed this during a podcast with Nikhil Kamath, one of the founders of Zerodha. “My mom works for the central government, and my dad was an accountant. So, yes, I’m the first engineer in the whole family,” he said. Nikhil was surprised by this and asked if Aravind came from a Tamil background. Aravind explained that his family has mostly worked in accounts, making engineering a new and exciting path for them.

Srinivas also shared a special memory about his childhood. Whenever he and his mom passed by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, she would point it out and say, “This is where you will study.” She believed that he would go there to learn.

His interest in artificial intelligence started when he joined a Kaggle competition. “That was my first step into AI. It was not just about winning; it was about understanding how machines learn from data,” he explained. He is very proud of his work ethic and enjoys pushing himself. “It’s not just about setting goals; it’s about doing what I love,” he added.

Aravind earned his engineering degree and a Master’s in electrical engineering from IIT Madras, and then he completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

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