Denis Yarats

Co-Founder & CTO, Perplexity

Denis Yarats is the Co-Founder & CTO of Perplexity, building AI-native search tools since 2022. With a PhD in AI from NYU and experience at Facebook AI Research, Quora, and Microsoft, Denis brings deep technical expertise to his work. He's also an angel investor in AI startups like Cognition Labs (Devin) and Cursor. Currently, he's developing Comet, a new "browser for agentic search" that reflects his ongoing commitment to advancing how we discover information online. His work sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning, natural language processing, and search technology.

Denis Yarats

Sessions / 2025 / 1 talk

  • This keynote panel features Denis Yarats and Joseph Gonzalez -- two pioneers bridging academic theory and practical application. Joseph Gonzalez has transformed his Berkeley research into tangible solutions through LM-Sys and Gorilla projects, now bringing his expertise in machine learning and robotics to RunLLM.com after successfully launching Turi based on his doctoral work. Denis Yarats complements this approach with his reinvention of information discovery at Perplexity, where he's leveraging his NYU PhD and Facebook AI experience to develop Comet, a revolutionary "browser for agentic search." Together, they exemplify how rigorous academic foundations can be transformed into technologies that solve real-world problems and reshape our digital interactions.

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