“Our broader vision is to make the planet smarter,” says UC Berkeley alum and perplexity co-founder, CEO, and president aravindsrinivas (PhD ’21, Computer Science). Srinivas’ AI journey began at the Indian Institute of Technology, teaching computers to play games like Pong and Breakout. That early spark led him into deeper machine learning research, eventually taking him to the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms. Srinivas then set his sights on Berkeley. “When it came to AI, Berkeley was the most happening university at the time,” he recalls. He was inspired by EECS professor and co-director of UC Berkeley’s AI Research Lab Pieter Abbeel and the students in his lab. “From them, I learned that software engineering is critical to doing great work in AI,” he says. “It’s not just about mathematical equations on a whiteboard, but rather making them work in practice. So you need to be a good engineer.” In 2022, Srinivas co-founded Perplexity with the goal of powering curiosity wi...