app · Perplexity AI (Aravind Srinivas, CEO)
Perplexity
Perplexity AI launched on December 7, 2022, founded by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski — all ex-OpenAI, Google, or Berkeley researchers. By early 2026 the company had reached a $21 billion valuation. It operates as an answer engine rather than a link aggregator: you ask a question in natural language, it searches the live web using its Sonar engine, synthesizes the top sources, and returns a cited answer with clickable references. For biology students the killer use case is literature triage: ask for "three recent papers on CRISPR off-target effects with DOIs" and get a structured, linked summary in seconds rather than manually sifting Google Scholar. Pro subscribers get access to more powerful models (Claude Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro) and can attach files for analysis. The free tier covers most daily search needs with rate-limited model access.
What it can help with
- cited answers
- live web search
- literature triage
- doi lookup
- source citations
- natural language query
- quick citation check
- model switching