The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Perplexity's Aravind Srinivas on Will Foundation Models Commoditise, Diminishing Returns in Model Performance, OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins & Why the Next Breakthrough in Model Performance will be in Reasoning


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Aravind Srinivas is the Co-Founder & CEO of Perplexity, the conversational "answer engine" that provides precise, user-focused answers to queries. Aravind co-founded the company in 2022 after working as a research scientist at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. To date, Perplexity has raised over $100 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, and Susan Wojciki.

In Today’s Episode with Aravind Srinivas We Discuss:

  1. Biggest Lessons from DeepMind & OpenAI

  • What was the best career advice Sam Altman @ OpenAI gave Aravind?

  • What were Aravind’s biggest takeaways at DeepMind?

  • How did DeepMind shape how Aravind built Perplexity?

  • What did Aravind mean by “competition is for losers?” What did he learn about talent assembly at DeepMind?

  1. The Next AI Breakthrough: Reasoning

  • Does Aravind think we are experiencing diminishing returns on compute & model performance?

  • Does Aravind agree reasoning will be the next big breakthrough for models?

  • What are the reasons Aravind thinks models suck at reasoning today?

  • What is the timeline for reasoning improvement according to Aravind?

  • What does Aravind think are the biggest misconceptions about AI today?

  1. Will Foundation Models Commoditise?

  • Does Aravind think foundation models will commoditise? What will the end state of foundation models look like?

  • Why does Aravind think the second tier models will get commoditised?

  • Why does Aravind think the subscription model will not work for AI models with true reasoning? 

  • Why does Aravind think the application layer companies will benefit from foundation models commoditising?

  • Why does Aravind think foundation models will not verticalize?

  • When does Aravind think is the right time to go enterprise? What is his strategy to differentiate Perplexity from its competitors?

  1. AI Arms Race: Who Will Win?

  • Who does Aravind think will be the winners of foundation models?

  • What do AI companies need to do to win the model arms race?

  • How does Aravind think startups can compete against incumbents' infinite cash flow?

  • What are the reasons Aravind thinks Perplexity’s browsing is better than ChatGPT?

  • What is Aravind’s biggest challenge at Perplexity today?

 

 

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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The PitchBy Harry Stebbings

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