A recent post claiming Indians can’t build AI companies has faced severe criticism. After Perplexity AI’s CEO Aravind Srinivas responded to this post with an emoji to express his doubt the post has gone viral.
The post shared on X (previously Twitter) stated that though "Indians can manage" AI companies, they are unable to create them. The X user further claimed any noteworthy AI companies were founded by “white Europeans”. Indians may manage, but they “can't found”, the post said.
Perplexity AI cofounder Aravind Srinivas replied to this post with a "Face with Monocle" emoji, which is associated with feelings of doubt or skepticism.
Netizens react
After that several X users started commenting on the post bashing the original post creator.
One individual wrote, “Perplexity AI, valued at over $8 billion with more than 15 million users, was co-founded by Aravind Srinivas, an Indian-origin entrepreneur. Abridge, valued at $2.5 billion and serving over 10,000 clinicians, was founded by Dr. Shiv Rao, an Indian-American innovator.”
Another remarked, “unfortunately you are misinformed or willfully ignorant. Indians or Indian Americans have founded a quarter of unicorns since 2015 (robinhood, instacart, list goes on…)”
After being slammed on social media, the original post creator explained, “To be clear, I was referring to H1B visa holders. If you are here under an H1B visa, you cannot found other companies. You are practically enslaved to your sponsor company.”
However, his justification did not close the debate.
An individual commented, "You could have simply googled it. Perplexity ($9B) n Glean ($4B) are both among the top AI companies that were founded by Indians. All your AI companies are built on groundbreaking AI paper co-authored by two Indians.”
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