Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas admits to going full AI for investor Q&As, pitch decks

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said that he no longer uses traditional pitch decks for investor presentations. He instead favors AI-generated responses for investor Q&A when raising capital for Perplexity. 

Pitch decks are commonly used in funding rounds to provide investors with key details about a company’s founders, product offerings, and financial outlook. Srinivas said during an interview with Berkeley Haas that he has replaced traditional investor pitch decks with AI-assisted communication, which represents a shift from typical Silicon Valley fundraising norms.

Srinivas says the Series A funding was the only time he made a pitch deck

Aravind Srinivas co-founded Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, after working as a researcher at Google’s DeepMind and OpenAI. He confirmed during an interview that he no longer prepares slide presentations when raising capital. 

“Famously, the Series A was the only time I made a pitch deck.  I just write a memo and I tell them you can do a Q&A and ask whatever you want. And if you need anything else that is not internal data, you can ask Perplexity. Like, it already knows everything.”

–Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity co-founder

Srinivas revealed that the Series A funding round was the only time he made a pitch deck. Still, for the latest funding round, he relied heavily on the company’s AI engine to interact with potential investors. He described a situation in which he held a Zoom webinar with an investor who later contributed a substantial amount of capital.

He confirmed that he had replied to a lengthy follow-up email from the investor with inquiries, using responses from Perplexity. He simply copied the answers to several questions in real-time. 

Perplexity started its Series A funding round in March 2023, which attracted $25.6 million led by Peter Sonsini of New Enterprise Associates with participation from the seed round investors Elad Gil, Founder of Color Health, Nat Friedman, Former CEO of GitHub and Bob Muglia Former President of Microsoft, as well as new investors Susan Wojcicki Former CEO of Youtube, Paul Buchheit Creator of Gmail, Soleio Designer of Messenger, Dropbox, and Databricks Ventures.

Perplexity intensifies competition across the AI landscape

Business Insider reported last month that the AI search engine firm Perplexity was seeking additional capital at a $20 billion valuation. The raise would mark a $2 billion increase in valuation from the previous $18 billion valuation in July. The firm has also received funding from Nvidia, SoftBank, and Jeff Bezos.

The report revealed that the firm has accumulated approximately $1.5 billion to date, with approximately $150 million in annual recurring revenue.

Perplexity has also launched its own native browser, Comet, which competes with tech giants like Google and OpenAI. The browser aims to shift internet use from passive browsing to active thinking by integrating conversational AI directly into web navigation. The tool allows users to ask questions, compare content, automate tasks, and maintain context across sites. 

Other companies, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, have expanded AI-driven research and communication tools. According to a Cryptopolitan report, OpenAI has signed over $1 trillion in compute deals this year alone, despite generating only $12 billion in annual revenue. The report highlighted deals signed between OpenAI and Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, and CoreWeave, which open the door to more than 20 gigawatts of computing power. 

Nvidia’s deal with the ChatGPT developer could grow to $500 billion, while AMD’s deal is projected to grow to $300 billion. Oracle and CoreWeave may add another $322 billion in commitments. 

OpenAI currently serves over 800 million users weekly and processes at least 6 billion tokens per minute through its API.

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