Indian-origin tech entrepreneur Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of AI search engine Perplexity AI, has once again landed himself in a heated controversy. Srinivas recently posted on X (formerly Twitter) and threw a challenge at Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

In the post that quickly gained attention, Srinivas wrote, "Considering raising $500B from USAID. Funding secured. Stop me if you can @elonmusk What is USAID?"

His comment came after Musk and the U.S. President Donald Trump's calls for the federal agency to be closed.

The USAID controversy 

The United States Agency for International Development has been in a state of pause after calls for its shutdown. The issue gained a push after a federal judge temporarily blocked the government's decision to put 2,200 USAID employees on paid leave. Srinivas' tweet, whether it was a serious suggestion or a sarcastic joke, has only added to the ongoing debate.

Who is Aravind Srinivas?

Aravind Srinivas is a key AI player, he co-founded Perplexity AI with Andy Konwinski and Johnny Ho and in 2022 brought in fellow founder Denis Yarats.

Perplexity‘s search engine counts some of the industry's greatest heavyweights-including Amazon's Jeff Bezos as investors.

He is an alumnus of IIT Madras, Srinivas went on to earn his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. His career began with a research internship at OpenAI, followed by similar roles at Google and DeepMind. Eventually, he returned to OpenAI as a research scientist before co-founding Perplexity AI.

Read: 'My eyes and throat burn': Anti-ageing influencer walks out of Nikhil Kamath's podcast