Srinivas: Launching Perplexity around GPT-4 would have been too late
Aravind Srinivas · Perplexity Founder Explains What Comes Next - Aravind Srinivas on TBPN April 23rd · Apr 25, 2025 · at 25:53
Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas discusses product timing, arguing consumer AI applications must be built ahead of model capabilities.
0:00 / 0:07exact quote · 7.9s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“You want to build at the right moment where, like, kind of, like, how we built perplexity around the GPT 3.5 time, not GPT four time. It would have been too late then.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Aravind Srinivas
Srinivas: Breaking up Google harms America and will not increase competition
“I don't think Google should be broken up for two main reasons. One is, it's not even in the interest of America for Google to be broken up. And number two is, it doesn't actually increase competition. It's just gonna, like transfer from one monopoly to another…”
Srinivas: Google Gemini is a horrible product despite a great model
“The assistant that they have, Gemini, is actually pretty horrible, and the model is great, But the product is not.”
Perplexity will be pre-installed on Android phones as default assistant
“We are going to be partnering with a OEM. I think Bloomberg's already written about it. Perplexity will be pre-installed on the phones of that OEM, and we'll be able to, like, push notify all those users to set perplexity as the default assistant on the Androi…”
Aravind Srinivas: Frontier AI Model Leads Will Last Only a Few Weeks
“My, our belief is that nobody's gonna have a lead in them having the best AI model for more than a few weeks.”
Srinivas: Musk made X much better by charging $8 for verification
“Like in, in some sense, Elon has turned X into some, something like that. There are a lot of trolls, a lot of random accounts and all that stuff, but by forcing people to have the blue mark and paying eight dollars a month and all that stuff, I think he's alre…”
Srinivas: Google lacks incentive to enable native shopping and travel checkout
“Google even if Gemini gives you shopping answers, they have no incentive to, like, let you transact. Because like, they lose, they make money by sending you merchant sites. That's why Google Flights doesn't let you book flights on Google. You have to book it o…”