Key Takeaways
- ChatGPT is a product made by OpenAI, and Perplexity is a product made by Perplexity AI, Inc., and both companies are based in the United States (North America).
- ChatGPT appears to be used by more people worldwide, while Perplexity shows strong growth in how many questions it handles.
- OpenAI is far larger than Perplexity AI by widely reported market value.
- “Crawlers” are automated programs that fetch web pages, and simple rules like robots.txt help guide them, but do not lock content away.
Story & Details
Two tools that feel similar, but are built for different moments
Perplexity and ChatGPT often get compared because both can answer questions in full sentences. The key difference is the core feeling.
ChatGPT is a general assistant. It is used for writing, learning, planning, coding, and many other tasks. Perplexity is built to behave more like a modern search experience, where the goal is a fast answer tied to sources, often with fresh web information.
Both sit inside a bigger wave: large language models that can read a question, predict a helpful response, and speak in a natural tone.
Who owns what, and what “nationality” really means here
ChatGPT belongs to OpenAI, the company that builds and runs it, under its published terms and policies. OpenAI is a company in the United States (North America).
Perplexity belongs to Perplexity AI, Inc., the company behind the Perplexity product. Perplexity AI is also a company in the United States (North America), founded and headquartered in San Francisco.
So the simple answer to the “India or America” question is this: both products come from American companies in the United States (North America). The confusion often comes from people mixing company location with personal background. Perplexity’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Aravind Srinivas, was born and raised in Chennai, India (Asia), and later moved to the United States (North America) for doctoral study and work.
Which one is more used worldwide, and which company is bigger
Usage can be measured in many ways: unique users, active users, questions asked, time spent, or total visits. The cleanest public signal for ChatGPT is that OpenAI has reported very large weekly usage, and independent academic work has studied how broadly it is used.
Perplexity publishes a different kind of signal in public talk and reporting: how many queries it processes. A month with hundreds of millions of queries is a big number, but it is not the same as hundreds of millions of people. One person can ask many questions in a day.
Even with those limits, the overall picture in January 2026 is clear: ChatGPT is the more widely used tool globally, while Perplexity is growing fast and carving out a clear “answer engine” space.
For company size, public reporting on market value makes the gap even clearer. Perplexity was widely reported as valued in the tens of billions of dollars in 2025. OpenAI was widely reported at a far higher valuation in 2025, putting it in a different class of scale.
Aravind Srinivas in plain terms
Aravind Srinivas is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Perplexity AI, Inc., the company behind Perplexity. Reporting and company profiles describe a path that blends research and product building: training in engineering and computer science, then work and research roles connected to modern artificial intelligence labs, followed by a startup aimed at reshaping how people search and learn.
A helpful way to understand his role is simple: he is steering Perplexity toward a world where people ask questions in normal language and get a structured answer that stays close to sources.
Pieter Abbeel and why his work keeps showing up in today’s AI
Pieter Abbeel is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States (North America), known for robot learning. His work helps explain a big idea behind modern AI systems: learning by doing.
Two learning styles matter here:
Deep imitation or apprenticeship learning: a system learns by watching a skilled example, often a human demonstration.
Reinforcement learning: a system learns by trial and error, guided by rewards and penalties.
This matters for real robots, but it also matters for the wider AI world, because the same learning ideas influence how systems become more reliable, more capable, and better at complex tasks.
Crawlers: the hidden workers behind search, and why they matter to AI answers
A crawler is a program that automatically requests pages on the web. Search engines use crawlers to discover pages and keep an index up to date. Many online services also use crawlers for monitoring, archiving, testing, or collecting public information.
Two key lessons keep people safe from common mistakes.
First: crawling is not the same as indexing.
Crawling means fetching a page.
Indexing means storing and showing it in a search system.
Second: robots.txt is guidance, not a lock.
A robots.txt file can tell well-behaved crawlers which paths to avoid. But it is not a password. It is not a security tool. If something must be private, it needs real protection, like access control.
For site owners and builders, the practical habit is simple: if a service claims it is a specific crawler, verify it. Major search providers publish ways to confirm whether requests really come from their crawlers.
A tiny Dutch mini-lesson for asking about these topics
These short lines are the kind of questions that help in daily life in the Netherlands (Europe). The Dutch stays Dutch. The explanations stay simple English.
Wat is Perplexity?
Simple meaning: asking what it is.
Word-by-word: Wat = what. is = is. Perplexity = Perplexity.
Usage note: neutral and normal, fine in almost any setting.
Van wie is ChatGPT?
Simple meaning: asking who it belongs to.
Word-by-word: Van = of, from. wie = who. is = is. ChatGPT = ChatGPT.
Usage note: neutral. Often used when talking about ownership.
Welke is het meest gebruikt?
Simple meaning: asking which one is used the most.
Word-by-word: Welke = which. is = is. het = it. meest = most. gebruikt = used.
Usage note: neutral. In fast speech, it sounds smooth and common.
Wat is een webcrawler?
Simple meaning: asking what a web crawler is.
Word-by-word: Wat = what. is = is. een = a. webcrawler = web crawler.
Usage note: slightly technical, but still normal in tech talk.
Conclusions
In January 2026, the comparison lands in a calm place. ChatGPT is the bigger global tool, backed by a much larger company. Perplexity is smaller, but sharp in focus: a search-like answer engine built around fast, cited responses. Behind both, the same quiet machinery keeps turning. Crawlers fetch pages, rules like robots.txt try to guide them, and careful verification helps separate trusted behavior from noise.
Selected References
[1] https://openai.com/policies/row-terms-of-use/
[2] https://openai.com/index/how-people-are-using-chatgpt/
[3] https://www.nber.org/papers/w34255
[4] https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/about
[5] https://www.britannica.com/money/Perplexity-AI
[6] https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/05/perplexity-received-780-million-queries-last-month-ceo-says/
[7] https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/perplexity-reportedly-raised-200m-at-20b-valuation/
[8] https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-hits-500-billion-valuation-after-share-sale-source-says-2025-10-02/
[9] https://awards.acm.org/about/2021-acm-prize
[10] https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/abbeel.html
[11] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309.html
[12] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro
[13] https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/verify-google-requests
[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXNEVt9rZG8
Appendix
AI: A short name for artificial intelligence, meaning computer systems that do tasks that feel like human thinking, such as language, vision, and decision-making.
Answer Engine: A search-style tool that tries to give a direct written answer, often with sources, instead of only a list of links.
Apprenticeship Learning: A way for a system to learn skills by watching expert examples, often human demonstrations.
ChatGPT: A conversational AI product made by OpenAI that can help with writing, learning, and many other tasks.
Crawler: An automated program that requests web pages. Search engines use crawlers to discover content and keep their index up to date.
Large Language Model: A model trained on large amounts of text so it can predict and generate language in a human-like way.
OpenAI: The company in the United States (North America) that builds and runs ChatGPT and other AI systems.
Perplexity: A search-like AI product that aims to provide direct answers tied to sources, made by Perplexity AI, Inc.
Reinforcement Learning: A learning style where a system improves by trial and error, guided by rewards for good results.
Robot Learning: A field that studies how robots can learn skills from data, demonstrations, and feedback rather than only fixed code.
Robots Exclusion Protocol: A shared standard that describes how robots.txt rules can guide crawlers that choose to follow them.
robots.txt: A small text file placed on a website that gives crawl guidance to well-behaved crawlers, but does not secure private data.
My Diary - Leonardo Cardillo 