The AI revolution could make the fortunes of some companies, while putting others at risk of being disrupted.
Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, shared a compelling perspective on which tech giant he believes is best positioned to thrive in the age of artificial intelligence. His surprisingly bullish stance on Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, stems from the enduring importance of human connection in a world increasingly mediated by AI. Srinivas also highlighted the potential vulnerability of Google’s advertising business model in this evolving landscape, suggesting a conflict between AI advancements and Google’s core revenue driver.
“If you had 100 bucks and you could only put it in one company,” Nikhil Kamath asked him, “which one would you pick? “Meta,” Srinivas replied. “In a world where AI works increasingly well, I think the human-to-human connection becomes even more essential.” This core value proposition, he argued, remains unchallenged within Meta’s ecosystem. “There is literally no one disrupting that in Instagram or WhatsApp.”
Srinivas continued, “In a world where people are going to be able to ask AIs to do stuff for them, how much a brand themselves, like, get known to the user matters even more.” This enhanced brand awareness, he believes, puts Meta in a uniquely advantageous position. “It’s a kind of interesting position to be in for them where their ads business is going to flourish even better than AI works.”
However, Srinivas doesn’t see the same positive outlook for Google. “I wouldn’t say the same for Google,” he cautioned. “Agents and Google ads are just completely on the opposite end, so business incentives. And that’s kind of why also Google has the least incentive to bring out AI into search or agents right there on the core Google homepage or Google Apps.” He concluded, “Meta doesn’t have this problem at all. They can roll out AIs, but the core feed of watching what other people post is still going to be the same.”
Srinivas seemed to be saying that while many tasks might get outsourced to AIs in the coming years, people would still need to keep in touch with one another. In this regard, Meta, with its suite of apps in Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, has a moat that no company can conceivably recreate — the network effects stemming from having over 3 billion people use its platforms will make Meta extremely hard to disrupt. Google, on the other hand, simply provides information through search, can could end up being replaced by AI agents. It’s an interesting perspective, and goes to show that even though Google now has the world’s best AI models, it might still end up seeing a considerable hit to its search and ads business with the advent of AI.