Perplexity CEO says his AI browser could replace recruiters, admin assistants in companies

Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas believes that Comet will eventually evolve into an AI operating system for white-collar workers.

Aravind Srinivas, CEO of the fast-rising Nvidia-backed startup Perplexity, has declared that his company's new AI-native browser, Comet, is poised to automate key functions of two roles critical to every modern workplace: recruiters and administrative assistants.

In a recent episode of The Verge's "Decoder" podcast, Srinivas detailed how Comet is engineered to go beyond simple web browsing, aiming to fully automate significant aspects of knowledge work. "A recruiter's work worth one week is just one prompt: sourcing and reach outs," he said.

He elaborated on Comet's capabilities, explaining how its built-in AI agent can seamlessly integrate with applications like Gmail, LinkedIn, and Google Calendar. This integration allows Comet to generate candidate lists, extract contact information, and dispatch personalized outreach emails – tasks traditionally handled by recruiting coordinators and sourcers, effectively streamlining the entire process.

Srinivas also believes Comet is set to absorb many of an executive assistant's daily responsibilities. These include email triage, comprehensive calendar management, and meeting preparation. "You want it to keep following up, keep a track of their responses," Business Insider quoted him as saying. The Perplexity CEO said the AI tool can "update the Google Sheets, mark the status as responded or in progress, and follow up with those candidates, sync with my Google calendar, and then resolve conflicts and schedule a chat, and then push me a brief ahead of the meeting."

Ultimately, Srinivas envisions Comet evolving into an "AI operating system" for white-collar professionals that could continuously run tasks in the background while executing complex commands.

 Comet browser on smartphones

Perplexity AI, which recently closed a substantial $500 million funding round valuing the company at $18 billion (with investors including Nvidia, Accel, Jeff Bezos, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt), is already in talks with mobile device makers to pre-install Comet on smartphones. This strategic move aims to directly challenge the entrenched dominance of Google Chrome and Apple Safari, with Srinivas acknowledging the difficulty but seeing such deals as a "game-changer for user growth."

Currently, Comet is in beta for desktops and available by invite only to premium users. Srinivas is, however, confident that users will be willing to pay for AI that delivers such meaningful work. The company hopes to stabilise the product for a few hundred thousand testers before targeting "tens to hundreds of millions" of users next year, signaling an ambitious push to bring this transformative AI browser to the mainstream.