AI as CFO? Perplexity Computer can manage your finances if you give it access to your bank account

Perplexity Computer can now act as your CFO and even go through your loans if you give access to it. (Representational image made with AI)

Perplexity is giving its AI agent, Perplexity Computer, the capability to not just do the work for you, but even manage your finances. The Aravind Srinivas-led startup has announced that Computer now comes with deeper integration with fintech platform Plaid. Now, the AI agent can access your bank account data, and track your loans.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas claimed that Perplexity Computer could now act as your own chief financial officer. He wrote on X, "Personal CFO."

But how does this work? Here is everything you need to know.

Perplexity Computer is an agentic AI that can do tasks on your behalf, similar to OpenClaw, but with a key difference. While OpenClaw works locally on any device, Perplexity Computer works entirely on the cloud, something that the company claims is better when it comes to cybersecurity.

The Computer can understand the tasks it receives and then delegate it to different AI models. That is, it may use Anthropic's Claude for reasoning and coding tasks, Google's Gemini for research, and OpenAI models for long-context understanding.

The new feature allows users to link their savings, credit card and loan accounts to Perplexity Computer through Plaid's network. Plaid is said to support over 12,000 financial institutions. The AI agent can then analyse your spending, liabilities, and even estimate your net worth in a single dashboard.

You can also ask the AI to build a retirement dashboard based on your finances, or set up plans for settling debt.

Previously, you could only link your portfolio to Perplexity Computer, which would allow the AI to give information related to the stock market.

The expanded integration now allows Perplexity Computer to cover virtually every aspect of your finances.

All users can link accounts via Plaid and access the portfolio page. Though only Perplexity Pro and Max subscribers get access to "advanced" Computer workflows.

The company states that it also plans to bring crypto wallets and real estate to the dashboard in the future.