Nvidia reportedly eyes Perplexity at a $30B+ valuation as AI search becomes an agent business -- TFN

• Nvidia is in talks to invest in Perplexity at over $30B, per The Information.

• The round would follow a $23B round in January 2026 and a $20B round in September 2025.

• Revenue has surged past $750M on an annualised basis, fuelled largely by Perplexity Computer.

Nvidia is reportedly discussing an investment in Perplexity as part of an equity funding round that would value the AI search startup at more than $30 billion, The Information reported, citing people with knowledge of the discussion.

The funding round would increase Perplexity's valuation by more than 50% from its previous financing a year ago, when the company closed a $200 million round at a $20 billion valuation in September 2025.

Perplexity's valuation jump

Founded in August 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, Perplexity raised $73.6 million at a $520 million valuation in January 2024, then $63 million at $1.04 billion in March 2024 to hit unicorn status.

TFN tracked the run from there: $500 million at $9 billion in late 2024,$500 million at $14 billion in May 2025, then a $100 million extension to $18 billion in July 2025, with Nvidia, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, NEA, and IVP all participating. September 2025's $20 billion round and January 2026's $23 billion round brought it here. That's roughly $1 billion to $30 billion-plus in about two years.

At $750 million in annualised revenue, a $30 billion valuation prices Perplexity at close to 40 times sales, a multiple private markets tolerate more easily than public ones will, which matters given CEO Aravind Srinivas has floated an IPO within the next few years.

Why Nvidia won't stay on the sidelines

This wouldn't be Nvidia's first check. It backed Perplexity's Series B in January 2024, returned for the unicorn round in March 2024, and joined the $18 billion extension in July 2025.

Per The Information, Nvidia had also weighed a technology licensing arrangement and hiring some of Perplexity's staff before the conversation shifted to a straight equity stake. A direct stake in one of the most visible AI-agent products on the market keeps Nvidia close to a customer that both burns GPU compute and generates the kind of usage data that shapes what chips get built next.

Search becomes the infrastructure for AI agents

Much of Perplexity's revenue growth traces to Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based AI agent that automates multi-step professional tasks, which TFN covered at launch.

The vision is that AI search is shifting from retrieving information for people to retrieving and acting on it for other AI systems, and Perplexity isn't the only one chasing that shift.

Exa is building search infrastructure purpose-built for AI agents rather than humans; TFN covered its $85 million Series B at a $700 million valuation in 2025, when Nvidia's NVentures joined Benchmark, Lightspeed, and Y Combinator, and its $250 million Series C at a $2.2 billion valuation in May 2026.

Perplexity is fighting on two fronts at once: Google and OpenAI have the distribution advantage, while agent-native challengers like Exa and You.com are building infrastructure that Perplexity didn't have to compete with a year ago.

Whether Perplexity is that layer, or simply the best-funded contender in a category still being defined, is the question a $30 billion price tag doesn't answer on its own.