Biography:Denis Yarats

From HandWiki
Denis Yarats
Born1987 (age 38–39)
Gomel, Belarusian SSR, USSR
EducationBelarusian State University (BA)
New York University (PhD)
OccupationSoftware engineer, tech entrepreneur
Known forCo-founder and CTO of Perplexity AI

Denis Yarats (born 1987) is a computer scientist and entrepreneur, best known as the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Perplexity AI, an AI-powered search engine launched in 2022.[1][2]

Early life and education

Yarats was born in Gomel, USSR, located in modern Belarus. His father was working on a tractor factory and his mother was a housewife. He spent his early life there and in Minsk where he obtained bachelor's degree in Belarusian State University in applied mathematics and IT. [3]In 2008 he became a finalist in Google Code Jam, but failed to get employed due to poor English skills and preparation.[4] He received his Ph.D. in computer science from New York University, where his research focused on reinforcement learning and natural language.[5]

Career

After his graduation in Belarus, Yarats moved to Moscow where he worked in Yandex maps as a Software Engineer. In his early career, Yarats held research positions at several institutions, including Facebook AI Research (FAIR).[citation needed] His work during this time focused on developing scalable algorithms for learning and decision-making in complex environments.[6]

Yarats worked in Seattle as a Software Development Engineer at Microsoft from 2011 to 2013, where he worked on the Bing search engine. From 2013 to 2016, he worked at Quora as a Staff Machine Learning Engineer in charge of technical projects, and from 2016 to 2022 he worked as an AI Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research (FAIR, now Meta AI). [5]

Yarats co‑authored Image Augmentation Is All You Need: Regularizing Deep Reinforcement Learning from Pixels (Yarats, Kostrikov & Fergus, ICLR 2021), which introduced the DrQ method using simple image-based data augmentations to enable model-free RL algorithms like SAC and DQN to learn directly from pixels and achieve state-of-the-art results on both DeepMind Control Suite and Atari 100k benchmarks.[7]

Yarats AI research has been cited over 9,115 times. His work has been praised by other researchers, including Yann LeCun, who later became an angel investor in Perplexity AI. [8]

Perplexity AI

In 2022, Yarats co-founded Perplexity AI alongside Aravind Srinivas, Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinski.[9] He met Srinivas during student exchange program in Berkeley. As CTO, he led the development of the company's flagship product, an AI powered search engine designed to deliver concise, source-backed answers to user queries.[10] The platform gained significant user traction and investment, with the company securing over $70 million in Series B funding and reaching millions of active users within two years of its launch.[11] As of 2025, the company had raised $200 million at a $20 billion valuation.[12][13]

References

  1. ↑ Weiss, Geoff. "What to know about Perplexity, the buzzy — and controversial — AI startup targeting a big funding round" (in en-US). https://www.businessinsider.com/perplexity-ai-startup-lawsuit-allegations-targets-funding-2024-10. 
  2. ↑ "Google Scholar". https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7kaXqgMAAAAJ&hl=en. 
  3. ↑ "Денис Ярац" (in ru). https://belmarket.by/businessman/c7bac346-6f32-4f6c-b635-3319318342de. 
  4. ↑ "How a Belarusian and his partners built one of the world's most valuable startups, Perplexity.". https://www.forbes.ru/svoi-biznes/526489-kak-belorus-s-partnerami-postroili-odin-iz-samyh-dorogih-startapov-v-mire-perplexity. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "How Denis Yarats and the Precision Engine Are Redefining Search at Perplexity AI" (in en-US). 2025-05-22. https://www.thekeyexecutives.com/2025/05/22/how-denis-yarats-and-the-precision-engine-are-redefining-search-at-perplexity-ai/. 
  6. ↑ Chiang, Ernest (2024-04-26). "Deep Dive Read With Me: Perplexity CTO Denis Yarats on AI-Powered Search". https://www.ernestchiang.com/en/notes/saas/perplexity-cto-denis-yarats-on-ai-powered-search/. 
  7. ↑ Kostrikov, Ilya; Yarats, Denis; Fergus, Rob (2020). "Image Augmentation is All You Need: Regularizing Deep Reinforcement Learning from Pixels". arXiv:2004.13649 [cs.LG].
  8. ↑ "Denis Yarats the Visionary Co-Founder and CTO of Perplexity-AI" (in en-US). 2025-07-24. https://weeklysiliconvalley.com/denis-yarats-the-visionary-co-founder-and-cto-of-perplexity-ai/. 
  9. ↑ Peluso, Olivia (2025-03-12). "Who Is Aravind Srinivas, the Founder and CEO Behind $9B Perplexity AI?" (in en-US). https://observer.com/2025/03/perplexity-ai-ceo-aravind-srinivas/. 
  10. ↑ "What is Perplexity AI and why is it stirring controversy?" (in en). 2024-10-24. https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/10/24/googles-latest-rival-what-is-perplexity-ai-and-why-is-it-causing-so-much-controversy. 
  11. ↑ Nuñez, Michael (2025-02-11). "Cerebras-Perplexity deal targets $100B search market with ultra-fast AI" (in en-US). https://venturebeat.com/ai/cerebras-perplexity-deal-targets-100b-search-market-with-ultra-fast-ai/. 
  12. ↑ Temkin, Marina (2025-09-11). "Perplexity reportedly raised $200M at $20B valuation" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/perplexity-reportedly-raised-200m-at-20b-valuation/. 
  13. ↑ "Perplexity finalizes $20 billion valuation round, the Information reports". Reuters. 10 September 2025. https://www.reuters.com/technology/perplexity-finalizes-20-billion-valuation-round-information-reports-2025-09-10/. 



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