# Perplexity saw room after Bing Chat and Bard launched

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/perplexity-saw-room-after-bing-chat-and-bard-launched/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/builders/aravind-srinivas/) · Aravind Srinivas is cofounder and CEO of Perplexity. · Held research roles at OpenAI and Google DeepMind before co-founding the AI search engine Perplexity in 2022.
- Host: David Lieb · General Partner, YC
- Show: Lightcone
- Episode: [How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/v/SP7Ua8FKZN4/), Feb 21, 2025
- Moment: 16:17 to 19:09 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/perplexity-saw-room-after-bing-chat-and-bard-launched/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/SP7Ua8FKZN4/?t=977

## Quote

> “I was **more worried about Microsoft** in the beginning because they were launching Bing Chat.”
> — [Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/builders/aravind-srinivas/) at [17:04](https://realalpha.app/v/SP7Ua8FKZN4/?t=1024) · Lightcone

## Takeaways

1. Microsoft's Bing Chat launch made him fear a pivot request.
2. An investor honored the handshake without demanding a change in direction.
3. He thought Microsoft lacked a consumer-product track record.

## About this segment

During fundraising, Bing Chat leaked just after a term-sheet handshake, and Google soon announced Bard. Aravind Srinivas says investors stayed committed and believed incumbents left room for a consumer-first product.

From “How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas”, Feb 21, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/SP7Ua8FKZN4/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[16:22](https://realalpha.app/v/SP7Ua8FKZN4/?t=982) oh, we actually have a chance of competing with somebody like a Google. When did that realization happen in this journey? How'd that go down? So I never really thought about the Google competition in a serious way, to be very honest, because I knew that, like, they cannot make this exact product on the Google homepage. It's so hard to know when a query is purely informational or not. And then the Google search page is already, like, so cluttered.

[16:49](https://realalpha.app/v/SP7Ua8FKZN4/?t=1009) There's the answer box, the knowledge panel. There's some ads. There's some links. There's, you know, like, perspectives from socials, all these social cards. it's already too much information. So it clearly feels like fast food and healthy meal difference for using Google and perplexity on even informational queries. I was more worried about Microsoft in the beginning because they were launching Bing Chat.

[17:15](https://realalpha.app/v/SP7Ua8FKZN4/?t=1035) In fact, on the day, we agreed to have a term sheet, like handshook on a term sheet with one of the venture capital investors, NEA, here in Sandwich Road. after like one week of torturous pitches and we were just having like coffee and then the words leaked screenshots of Bing chat and I was like, okay, like there's this 30-day due diligence period, right? And one of the other investors would give me a term sheet.

[17:43](https://realalpha.app/v/SP7Ua8FKZN4/?t=1063) He just increased it to 45 days. You know, you could see the diff. Yeah, right. It was in sneakily and I knew why clearly. He also texted, what do you think about this thing? Okay, okay. I get it. I get it. getting a little sheepish and then the other person i handshook with like he texted me the night saying hey do you have time for a call tomorrow okay like clearly like this is it right so i told my co-founder okay maybe they're gonna back out or ask us to pivot so maybe we should just try to sell the company and like get it done you know this is not gonna go anywhere the person actually who handshook said look i'm not gonna ask you to pivot i'm not gonna ask you to like do anything different uh you guys keep going and uh we already word is word i was like damn that's that's pretty impressive and then the next week actually google also releases a blog

[18:34](https://realalpha.app/v/SP7Ua8FKZN4/?t=1114) from sundar saying they're announcing something called the bard which is screenshots so we knew that like this is gonna get pretty big and competitive but we were like look it's at the end um microsoft was never really good at consumer products for a long long time you can't suddenly changed that uh so they actually messed up the opportunity in my opinion totally google obviously i knew that they're going to have their own problems and challenges so i felt like there was space for someone else here yeah having spent almost a decade at google myself um i see a lot