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'AI companies were founded by white Europeans': Indian-origin co-founder shuts down author's remark with just 1 emoji
An author got community-noted on X after he claimed that Indians had not started any AI companies. An Indian cofounder reacted to the post.
Amid ongoing debates over reforms to the H-1B visa programme, an inflammatory remark about Indians and AI has caught the attention of Perplexity AI cofounder Aravind Srinivas. He reacted to a post where a man claimed that all the AI companies of “note” are founded by “white Europeans.” Further adding that “Indians can manage” an AI company but never start one.
The viral X post quickly got community-noted, with people pointing out that the claim was “factually incorrect.” It also mentioned Aravind Srinivas.
What did the community note say:
“Perplexity was founded by Aravind Srinivas an Indian. It has a valuation of $8B+ and 15M+ users. Abridge was founded by Dr. Shiv Rao an Indian American. The company has a valuation of $2.5B and serves 10k clinicians.”
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How did Aravind Srinivas react?
The Indian techie re-shared the post and used a single emoji to express his reaction. He shared the Face with Monocle emoticon. According to Emojipedia, the “yellow face with furrowed eyebrows wearing a monocle” shows that someone is “pondering, considering, or questioning something, sometimes with a sense of skeptical or ironic observation or encouraging a closer look at some content.”
Take a look at the post here:
Perplexity AI was co-founded by Aravind Srinivas, Johnny Ho, Denis Yarats and Andy Konwinski in 2022. Srinivas, who worked at OpenAI as an AI researcher, is the company's CEO.
Also Read: ‘I’m employed because an Indian immigrant’: American executive thanks Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas for job creation
Who is Aravind Srinivas?
An IIT Madras graduate, Srinivas started his career as a Research Intern at OpenAI, where he later returned to work as a researcher. He also did his internship with Google and Deepmind. In addition to being a cofounder of Perplexity, he is also an angel investor for several AI projects.
