Perplexity AI's pitch to RIAs: run a 50-person firm with one advisor

"An advisor who really knows how to take advantage of these tools can make a one-person shop feel like a 50-person shop," Jeff Grimes, Perplexity's head of live events product, told InvestmentNews. "I do think you'll see maybe more of a burgeoning of these smaller institutions because of the operating efficiency. It's more possible for one person or two people to start a really powerful advisory, maybe in a way that it wasn't before."

Perplexity Computer, which aggregates answers from Anthropic's Claude, Gemini, Grok, and OpenAI, and other AI models, is priced at $20 per month for a Pro subscription to automate investment and financial planning tasks for advisors. Perplexity positions this as a more affordable option than the large-scale enterprise market that's been led by Anthropic, which struck advisor partnerships in February with LPL Financial and Orion.