Aravind Srinivas & Edwin Chen: The $1B Bootstrap, Apple's AI Edge, and Benchmarks | TWiAI E10

This week we sat down with Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen. Aravind is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, whose revenue has grown from $100M to $500M on the back of Perplexity Computer. Edwin is the co-founder and CEO of Surge AI, the data training company teaching frontier models how to think, which quietly bootstrapped past $1B in revenue without ever raising a dollar.This Week In AI is made possible by:PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https://paypalopen.com/Timestamps:00:00 Cold open01:00 Welcome & intro to Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen02:40 Why Perplexity Comet and Perplexity Max are taking off05:25 Edwin on Surge AI and why "data labeling" is the wrong term10:47 Tim Cook steps down — what Apple's new CEO should do13:56 Owning your agent loops: why Apple wins21:20 "The iPhone is not getting disrupted by AI at all"23:09 $242B raised in Q1 2026 and the late-stage capital flood23:55 Edwin on bootstrapping Surge past $1B without raising25:09 The ChatGPT "one weird trick" story and clickbait models30:58 Claude Code as a loss leader to dominate token collection33:30 Are we in the endgame for coding?35:35 Autocomplete to auto-diff to auto-outcomes38:54 The death of the no-code movement41:34 30% headcount growth, 5x revenue, the efficiency playbook45:41 AI in Hollywood, Gal Gadot, and $70M movies that should cost $200M50:29 "People don't buy models, they buy products"57:20 Specialization vs commoditization — what actually accrues value58:00 "LM Arena is a cancer on AI"63:34 Perplexity's heuristics for measuring user intent65:41 Model Council, Jensen Huang, and orchestrating frontier models71:23 Most impressive AI experiences — WhisperFlow, Grok on X, Claude Design, and WHOOP78:29 Hiring at Surge AI and PerplexitySubscribe to This Week in AI on Apple:https://thisweekinai.ai/appleSubscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify:https://thisweekinai.ai/spotifyFollow Jason:X: @jasonLinkedIn: /jasoncalacanisCheck out all our partner offers:https://partners.launch.co/Links Mentioned on the Show:Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai/Surge AI: https://surge.ai/Perplexity Comet: https://comet.perplexity.ai/Perplexity Max: https://perplexity.ai/maxClaude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-codeClaude Design: https://claude.com/claude-designOpenAI Codex: https://openai.com/codexGitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilotCursor: https://cursor.com/LM Arena: https://lmarena.ai/Kimi K2: https://www.kimi.com/DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/Apple Silicon: https://www.apple.com/mac/m4/WhisperFlow: https://wisprflow.ai/WHOOP: https://www.whoop.com/