Perplexity: How 31-year-old Indian founder is trying to shake ChatGPT, Google's Gemini AI dominance

Cashing in on Mittals' Airtel subscribers base, Aravind Srinivas-led Perplexity AI achieved has achieved a big feat -- it has dethroned giants like ChatGPT by clinching the top spot among free apps on the Apple App Store. The abrupt surge follows a strategic alliance with telecom operator, which now provides its customers with free access to the Perplexity Pro subscription costing Rs 17,000 a year.

Apart from free access, Perplexity is also giving its non-paying users early access to the company's exclusive Comet browser, which is currently invite-only.

Why is the Perplexity-Airtel deal a hit?
Unlike Google’s Gemini Pro offer, which is targeted at students, Airtel’s collaboration with Perplexity covers a wider demographic — from school and college students to researchers and working professionals. Perplexity Pro offers real-time, structured answers by tapping into models like GPT-4.1 and Claude, effectively replacing traditional search results with contextual, citation-based insights. Users can upload documents, ask follow-up questions, and summarise complex data within a single interface.

For students managing research deadlines or preparing for exams, Perplexity Pro acts like a digital assistant, simplifying dense academic material and generating organised responses from trusted sources. Professionals in fields such as consulting, design, and law can use the tool to extract insights from reports, draft content, or generate visuals. The Pro version also includes tools like Perplexity Labs for image generation and coding support, making it useful across a range of tasks.

Similar to Perplexity, ChatGPT observed a surge due to the Ghibli art trend, which went viral in India. At that time, OpenAI said the platform gained one million users in an hour — a moment CEO Sam Altman called one of the “craziest viral moments” he had seen. By comparison, the chatbot took five days to hit one million users in 2022.

While Perplexity has topped the iOS charts, ChatGPT is still the most popular app on the Google Play Store, where Perplexity hasn't yet made an appearance.

Dominance of ChatGPT, others
Within three years, the AI startup is valued at $18 billion after it raised fresh capital by bringing in $100 million with the financing, said a Bloomberg report. The deal is an extension of a previous round from a few months ago that valued the company at $14 billion.

Due to its rising popularity and the talent it possesses, the platform saw keen interest from Apple and Meta Platforms for a possible takeover. Zuckerberg's tech giant had moved ahead with a multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI before it had plans for Perplexity. Apple, which has failed to have big wins in the AI space and lost more than $640 billion in market value, is also warming up to such a move. Bloomberg News reported last month that executives have held internal talks about making an offer for Perplexity, which would add talent and help Apple develop an AI-based search engine.

As of now, model builders like OpenAI and Anthropic remain the biggest companies on the list, having raised large sums of cash from marquee Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The two AI behemoths have accumulated a combined $81 billion in venture funding, more than half of the total $142.45 billion that companies on this year’s AI 50 list have raised, according to Forbes.

Amid facing tight competition from big giants, Srinivas, who previously worked with Google and OpenAI before co-founding the platform with Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, remains confident of his product. “Competition is real. Let’s acknowledge that OpenAI is extremely well-funded and doesn’t face the same innovative constraints under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). ChatGPT is their most successful consumer product, which makes it tough to compete directly. That’s why I prefer to focus more on the browser space. I believe Comet, the browser, can become an abstraction layer above chatbots,” he said.