‘Chennai boys’ Sundar Pichai and Aravind Srinivas meet in Paris, social media goes wild

Both Pichai and Srinivas were attending the AI Action Summit in Paris, co-chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron.

On Tuesday, Perplexity AI CEO and co-founder Aravind Srinivas shared a photograph that shows him posing with the CEO of Google. Both Pichai and Srinivas were dressed in formals, with the former wearing a blue necktie and the latter choosing red.

“Great meeting you Sundar Pichai,” wrote Srinivas as he shared the photograph on X.

The reactions

The picture garnered nearly half a million views in a matter of hours, also racking up a ton of comments in the process.

Many of the comments focused on their roots in India – Google’s Sundar Pichai was born in Madurai and spent a large part of his childhood in Chennai, while Aravind Srinivas was born in Chennai over two decades later. Both Pichai and Srinivas also attended the Indian Institute of Technology – Pichai in Kharagpur and Srinivas in Madras.

“Chennai boys ruling the AI world,” wrote one X user in the comments section.

Another had a pun that pleased many, writing: “ChennAI Express.”

A third X user simply wrote “Chennai boys” while X user Anand said: “Just two people from Chennai dominating search for the entire world.”

Questions were also asked about a possible acquisition of Perplexity.

“Does he know you’re his competitor?” a user asked. Another wrote: “Real life version of keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

“Moments of power shift in tech,” a person said, referring to Perplexity AI emerging as a competitor to Google in the search engine market.