Laps
Perplexity AI, Inc., or simply Perplexity, is an American privately held software company offering a web search engine that processes user queries and synthesizes responses.[3] Perplexity products use large language models and include web search capabilities which provide responses based on current Internet content, citing sources used.[4] A free public version is available, while a paid Pro subscription offers access to more advanced language models and additional features.
Perplexity AI, Inc., was founded in 22 August 2022[5] by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski. As of September 2025, the company was valued at US$20 billion.[6]
Perplexity AI has faced legal scrutiny over allegations of copyright infringement, unauthorized use of content, and trademark issues from several major media organizations, including the BBC, Dow Jones, and The New York Times.[7][8] According to separate analyses by Wired and, later, Cloudflare, Perplexity uses undisclosed web crawlers with spoofed user-agent strings to scrape the content of websites that prohibit or explicitly block web scraping.[9][10]
History
In August 2022, Perplexity AI, Inc., was founded by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, engineers with backgrounds in back-end systems, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.[11] It launched its main search engine on December 7, 2022, and has since released a Google Chrome extension and apps for iOS and Android.[4][12] In February 2023, Perplexity reported two million unique visitors.[4] By April 2024, Perplexity has raised $165 million in funding, which values the company at over $1 billion.[13] As of June 2025, Perplexity closed a $500 million funding round, elevating its valuation to $14 billion.[14] Investors in Perplexity AI have included Jeff Bezos, Tobias Lütke, Nat Friedman, Nvidia, and Databricks.[15][16][13] Additionally, Perplexity has received funding from 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm notable for its association with Donald Trump Jr.[17]
In July 2024, Perplexity announced the launch of a new publishers’ program to share advertising revenue with partners.[18] On January 18, 2025, the day before the impending U.S. ban on the social media app TikTok, Perplexity submitted a proposal for a merger with TikTok US.[19][20][21][22] On August 12, 2025, Perplexity made a bid to purchase Chrome from Google for $34.5 billion.[23] Perplexity stated that the sale could remedy antitrust litigation against Google, in which a judge was considering compelling the sale of Chrome.[24] In December 2025, Cristiano Ronaldo took a undisclosed stake in Perplexity AI and entered a global brand partnership with the company.[25]
As of early 2026, Perplexity AI reached a valuation of $21.21 billion following its Series E-6 funding round. In January 2026, the company signed a three-year, $750 million agreement with Microsoft to use its Azure cloud and its Foundry service, giving Perplexity access to models from OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. Amazon Web Services remained its main cloud provider.[26]
In February 2026, Perplexity transitioned to a subscription-first model by discontinuing its AI-integrated advertising strategy.[27] Leadership stated this move was intended to preserve user trust in the “answer engine,” prioritizing objective results over ad revenue.[27]