Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Perplexity
The San Francisco "answer engine", founded in August 2022 by former OpenAI researcher Aravind Srinivas with Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinski, that answers questions with a short, cited summary of live web results instead of a list of links. Perplexity does not train frontier models; it combines its own search index and Sonar models (post-trained on open-weight bases) with models rented from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others. It is the clearest test of whether a product layer on rented models can take share from Google in search. It raised money unusually fast — from ~$520m (January 2024) to ~$20bn (September 2025, reported) — and spent much of it buying distribution: a free browser (Comet, 2025), an unsolicited ~$34.5bn offer for Google's Chrome during the antitrust remedies case (August 2025), and device and telecom deals with Motorola, Airtel and Samsung (a ~$400m Snap deal was ended in 2026 before a broad launch). Its defining conflict is with its sources: News Corp's Dow Jones and New York Post, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Britannica, CNN, three Japanese newspapers, Reddit and Amazon all sued it in 2024–26. After abandoning advertising in February 2026 and launching an agent product (Perplexity Computer) with usage-based credits, its annualised revenue was reported above $450m in March 2026 (FT) and above $750m by August 2026 (The Information; company figures, unaudited).
At a glance
- Founded
- August 2022, San Francisco, by Aravind Srinivas (CEO), Denis Yarats (CTO), Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinski
- Headquarters
- San Francisco; offices reported in New York, Austin, London and elsewhere (verify)
- Ownership / structure
- Private. Investors include IVP, NEA, Accel, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Nvidia, Bezos Expeditions, Databricks Ventures, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross (reported)
- Leadership (2026)
- Aravind Srinivas (co-founder and CEO); Denis Yarats (co-founder and CTO); Johnny Ho (co-founder, product); Dmitry Shevelenko (chief business officer); Jesse Dwyer (communications) (reported; verify current titles)
- AI products
- Perplexity answer engine (web, apps); Pro ($20 a month) and Max ($200 a month, July 2025); Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max; Deep Research (February 2025); Comet browser (July 2025; free from October 2025) and Comet Plus ($5 publisher bundle); Perplexity Computer agent (February 2026); Sonar API and models; assistants on Android, Samsung Galaxy S26 ("Hey Plex", Bixby integration) and Motorola
- Scale
- ~10m monthly users (early 2024) and ~15m (spring 2024) (company claims); ~780m queries in May 2025 (Srinivas, reported); 34m monthly users (March 2026, third-party estimate, verify); annualised revenue ~$305m → >$450m (March 2026, FT), ~$500m (April 2026, Srinivas), >$750m (August 2026, The Information) — all reported, unaudited
- Capital raised
- Seed ~$3.1m (2022); Series A ~$25.6m (March 2023); ~$73.6m at ~$520m (January 2024); ~$63m at ~$1bn (April 2024); SoftBank at ~$3bn (June 2024); ~$500m at ~$9bn (December 2024); ~$500m at ~$14bn (2025); ~$100m at ~$18bn (July 2025); ~$200m at ~$20bn (September 2025) — all reported; talks at >$30bn with Nvidia reported August 2026 (unconfirmed)
- Key partnerships
- Model suppliers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, open-weight models; Cerebras for fast inference, 2025); distribution: SoftBank Corp (Japan, 2024), Motorola (April 2025), Bharti Airtel (July 2025), PayPal and Venmo (2025), Snap (~$400m, November 2025; ended by mutual agreement 2026, reported), Samsung (Galaxy S26, 2026); content: Publishers' Program (July 2024), Comet Plus publishers (2025), Getty Images (October 2025, reported)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding and the answer-engine launch (2022); the plagiarism and robots.txt backlash and the Publishers' Program (2024); the Dow Jones/New York Post suit and the litigation wave (2024–26); sponsored answers and the retreat from ads (2024–26, failure); the funding ladder to ~$20bn (2024–25); distribution deals (2025–26); Comet and Comet Plus (2025); the TikTok and Chrome bids and the Google remedies (2025); the Cloudflare, Reddit and Amazon access disputes (2025–26); Perplexity Computer and usage pricing (2026)
10 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2022
Founding and the Answer Engine Launch
Founding / launch
2024
Dow Jones New York Post Suit and the Publisher Litigation Wave
Lawsuit (defendant), multiple related cases
2024
Funding Ladder From 520m to 20bn
Funding rounds (a sequence)
2024
Plagiarism and Robots txt Backlash and the Publisher Program
Controversy and response (revenue-share programme)
2024
Sponsored Answers and the 2026 Retreat From Ads
Launch (advertising) and reversal — a failure
2025
Cloudflare Reddit and Amazon Agent Access Disputes
Lawsuits (defendant) and a public dispute over crawling and agent access
2025
Comet Browser and Comet Plus
Launch (browser) and publisher revenue-share programme
2025
Distribution Deals Motorola Airtel Samsung and Snap
Partnerships (distribution)
2025
TikTok and Chrome Bids and the Google Remedies
Acquisition proposals (unsolicited) and antitrust positioning
2026
Perplexity Computer and Usage Based Pricing
Launch (agent product) / pricing change