OpenAI has hired Shivakumar Venkataraman, a 21-year veteran of Google, as its new vice president. Venkataraman’s extensive experience in search advertising at Google makes him a valuable asset for OpenAI as it plans to build ‘Google Search Alternative’.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Venkataraman previously led Google’s search ads business and has a deep understanding of the company’s search infrastructure and data systems. His expertise will likely prove invaluable as OpenAI develops its own search product.
Originally from Hyderabad, Venkataraman earned his degree in computer science engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, in 1990. He then pursued a doctorate in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
Venkataraman began his career as a summer intern at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and later worked as a software engineer at IBM.
At Google, he rose to lead its core search advertisement business and was promoted to vice president of Google Labs, a division focusing on virtual and augmented reality research, revived after more than a decade.
He was also appointed the head of Google’s blockchain division to oversee “blockchain and other next-gen distributed computing and data storage technologies.”
The hiring comes as OpenAI prepares to launch its own search engine, which could potentially compete with Google’s core product.
As OpenAI’s new Vice President, Venkataraman’s role is unclear, but his expertise in search advertising and infrastructure will undoubtedly be a major asset for the company. OpenAI did not respond to AIM’s request for comment by the time of writing.
Meanwhile, in order to tackle the likes of Perplexity AI and ChatGPT, Google introduced ‘AI Overviews’ at Google I/O 2024. This feature generates summaries for the queries provided by the user.
“Sometimes you want a quick answer, but you don’t have time to piece together all the information you need. Search will do the work for you with AI Overviews,” said Liz Reid VP of Google Search.
Powered by the Gemini model customised for Google Search, it combines Gemini’s advanced capabilities — including multi-step reasoning, planning, and multimodality — with best-in-class Search systems.
