watch now6:3006:30Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas: Comet browser is meant to be 'a true personal assistant'Squawk BoxPerplexity AI CEO and founder Aravind Srinivas said on Friday that the startup's Comet browser can boost ductivity so that companies won't need extra employees."Instead of hiring one more person on your team, you could just use Comet to supplement all the work that you're doing," Srinivas told CNBC's "Squawk Box."The CEO said the artificial intelligence-powered web browser is a "true personal assistant" that allows users to complete more tasks in the same amount of time and said that the ductivity gained could be worth $10,000 per year for a single person.AI is already being deployed across es to headcount and make operations more efficient, but the labor impact has so far been "limited," according to Goldman Sachs chief U.S.
economist Jan Hatzius.Srinivas estimated that the value of "human digital knowledge work" contributes around $25 trillion to the gross domestic duct, so a 20% gain in ductivity could easily amount to $5 trillion in GDP growth.Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee agreed with Srinivas that AI could be a boon to the overall GDP if it can raise ductivity growth and service, but cautioned massive AI infrastructure spending.Read more CNBC newsOpenAI's Sora 2 is putting safety and censorship to the test with stunningly real sAmazon faces FAA, NTSB be after two dery drones crashed into crane in ArizonaJeff Bezos says AI is in an industrial bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits from the Perplexity AI rolls out Comet browser for free worldwide"We should think what happens if the growth rate of AI is not as large as its biggest ponents think," Goolsbee told CNBC's "Squawk Box" later Friday.
"Might we get over our skis a bit with over-investment and have to clean up if there were a bubble?
I think we do want to think that topic."Data center demand hasn't yet shown signs of stopping as companies have continued to bolster AI investments.
Megacaps Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet are looking to spend as much as $320 billion combined on AI nologies and datacenter expansions in 2025.Perplexity initially launched Comet in July to users with Perplexity Max, which costs $200 per month, garnering a waitlist of millions of people, the company said.
The browser became available to download for free on Thursday to everyone worldwide.Comet can browse the internet to assist with re and asynchronously perform multiple tasks."It's truly dering value and you being able to delegate tasks to it," Srinivas said.Other companies have also been rolling out their own AI browser assistants.In January, OpenAI introduced its web agent, Operator, and Google released Gemini AI to its Chrome browser in September.