News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Maybe we were wrong about Perplexity
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company's weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I'm Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. Most Read from Fast Company Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at [email protected], and follow me on X @thesullivan. Perplexity's valuation is soaring. Its traffic tells a murkier story In a feature about the AI answer engine Perplexity in 2024, I suggested that the startup wasn't likely to last for the long haul against better-financed players like OpenAI and Anthropic, and that it was most likely an acquisition target. But here we are, well into 2026, and Perplexity is still alive and showing potential. Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest in Perplexity in an equity round that would value the AI startup at more than $30 billion. That would mark a 50% increase from its estimated $20 billion valuation just a year ago. The Information reported that the company's annualized revenue is now more than $750 million, up from under $250 million at the start of 2026. At $750 million in annualized revenue, a $30 billion valuation is roughly 40 times sales. In February, Perplexity launched its Computer product, which deploys AI agents to do work on behalf of users. It also switched to a usage-based pricing plan in which users get a certain amount of credits for agentic work every month. The Financial Times reported that Perplexity's revenue increased 50% in a month after the launch of Computer. By March, Perplexity's annual recurring revenue had risen to $450 million, the report said, with some of that revenue coming from "tens of thousands" of enterprise customers. The picture of how many people are actually going to Perplexity for answers is somewhat muddled. Numbers from Similarweb suggest that traffic to the Perplexity.ai website peaked at 219 million visits per month in October 2025 and has been retreating ever since. App usage tells a different story. Similarweb numbers show that monthly active users of the Perplexity app on iOS and Android grew from 26.2 million in August 2025 to 37.9 million by February 2026, a roughly 45% increase in six months.
Sony and Warner Music Sue Anthropic, Alleging Theft of Intellectual Property
In what feels a bit like a flashback to the days just after the release of ChatGPT, music publishers are using very harsh language in a new lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history," per Axios. At first glance -- and honestly after a few glances -- it's a bit of oddly timed legal saber-rattling, essentially all about song lyrics, and it seems calibrated to result in a drawn-out legal fight (or a lovely, big settlement for the plaintiffs). The suit was filed late Friday night in Northern California federal court. It names Anthropic the company, as well as co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. The monetary damages sought -- $150,000 per alleged infringement -- potentially add up to billions. You might be saying "Hey, aren't all sorts of music publishers already suing Anthropic?" And yes they most certainly are, big and small. Universal Music Group, Concord, and ABKCO sued back in 2023; BMG sued in March; and the indie publisher Round Hill Music sued earlier this month. The gambit with this latest suit appears to be a bifurcated approach. As laid out in the industry-friendly publication Music Business Worldwide, the suit partly leans on documents released thanks to an earlier lawsuit: Bartz v. Anthropic. That, you may recall, was the book author lawsuit that was settled last year with Anthropic agreeing to pay $1.5 billion. The company had allegedly pirated thousands of books by torrenting the Library Genesis (LibGen) and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) collections. In the end, Anthropic agreed to destroy the pirated copies it had used or planned to use for training data. At the risk of editorializing in a legal matter without being a lawyer myself, unless there were lyric books in those allegedly pirated collections, this section of the lawsuit seems to be there mainly to establish a pattern of conduct that helps the plaintiffs' case. Torrenting e-books, after all, is kind of a funny and roundabout way to get your hands on song lyrics. But the lawsuit also alleges that Anthropic violated the plaintiffs' copyrights by scraping authorized lyric repositories like MusixMatch and LyricFind. And lyrics can allegedly be coaxed out of Claude verbatim. As examples, the suit cites : "[...]such beloved songs as 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough,' 'All I Want for Christmas is You,' 'Eye of the Tiger,' 'Here Comes Santa Claus,' and 'Paper Rings.'" This is a more familiar, if still legally fuzzy, type of allegation, a bit like the famous New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity. That suit bypasses any sort of fair use rationale when it comes to training data, and points instead to the idea that you can (allegedly) get ChatGPT to reproduce verbatim and substantive sections of paywalled New York Times articles. The legal thinking goes that this harms the New York Times, a fount of information, by potentially letting customers get that same information from a chatbot. That case is still unresolved. Gizmodo reached out to Anthropic for a statement but did not receive a reply.
OpenSea and Perplexity Join Forces to Give AI Agents Real-Time Blockchain Insights - Crypto Economy
* OpenSea integrated its market data with Perplexity Computer, giving AI agents real-time access to tokens, NFTs and activity across more than 25 blockchains. * The partnership lets Perplexity use structured onchain data and cite results directly, helping users verify answers in a market that changes continuously. * OpenSea gains a new distribution channel for its data, while Perplexity strengthens crypto responses with live market signals instead of relying mainly on delayed information. OpenSea has integrated its market data with Perplexity Computer, giving AI agents real-time access to trading activity across more than 25 blockchains. Users can ask about tokens, NFTs, collections, and market momentum, while the system draws directly from OpenSea's live data rather than relying only on standard price feeds across supported digital markets. The key shift is that blockchain market activity is becoming a native information source for AI agents. Perplexity can also cite the results it uses, giving users a way to verify answers in a market where conditions can change within hours. OpenSea turns onchain activity into an AI data layer The connection expands OpenSea's role beyond its marketplace interface. The company has evolved from an NFT marketplace into a platform supporting token trading, cross-chain swaps, and portfolio management across multiple networks, after processing billions of dollars in transactions since launch. Its data is now gaining value outside OpenSea itself, potentially turning the platform into a market-information provider for external AI systems. Trades, volumes, and activity that once primarily served marketplace users can now feed agents answering questions elsewhere through AI-driven user interfaces, while OpenSea expects more integrations as AI becomes more central to crypto interaction. Public blockchains give this model an unusual advantage. Much traditional financial information sits behind private databases, terminals, or licensing systems, while a significant portion of onchain transfers, trades, and liquidity is publicly verifiable. OpenSea is positioning itself as the bridge that organizes raw blockchain activity into information AI systems can use more efficiently. Instead of requiring Perplexity to interpret massive transaction flows independently across different networks, the integration supplies a structured view of market activity, helping agents incorporate near real-time signals into responses during fast-moving trading conditions while reducing dependence on information published only after events occur. For Perplexity, the integration adds another specialized source to Computer, its agent platform for completing complex tasks using tools, files, code, and internet sources. The company says its products handle more than 1.5 billion queries each month. Crypto provides a demanding test because static answers can become outdated almost immediately in a market that operates continuously. The OpenSea connection is already available through Perplexity Computer's connections section, creating a new distribution channel for OpenSea while giving Perplexity a way to ground crypto responses in current onchain activity rather than delayed reporting for faster responses.
Chronograph and Perplexity Announce Integration of Private Capital Data into Perplexity Computer
NEW YORK, Aug. 26, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Chronograph, leading global provider of portfolio monitoring, valuations, and analytics technology for private capital investors, announced a partnership with Perplexity to bring clients' trusted Chronograph data into Perplexity's answer engine, and its agent platform, Perplexity Computer. The integration enables private capital professionals to query their validated, auditable portfolio data in plain language within Perplexity, alongside the licensed research sources their teams already rely on. As institutional investors increasingly adopt AI to accelerate research, valuation, and reporting, the importance of a well-governed data foundation only grows. Chronograph is now available among Perplexity's new Licensed Finance Data Sources, bringing the most trusted private capital data to one of the most widely adopted AI research surfaces in a single workflow. Through the connector, teams can pull validated portfolio data straight from Chronograph to drive analytics, generate reporting, and leverage advanced AI to create finished work, built against a trusted data foundation. Reported figures trace back to their source documents, so teams doing mission-critical work always know which data set produced which number. "Private markets intelligence has traditionally been difficult to access and even harder to put to work," said Jeff Grimes, Head of Live Events Products, Perplexity. "By bringing Chronograph's institutional-quality data into Perplexity Finance, we're giving investors a faster, more intuitive way to research private markets, compare opportunities, and turn complex information into decision-ready insight." "For 10 years we have worked to integrate trusted private capital data directly into investor workflows," said Divya Odayappan, Product Lead, Chronograph LP. "With the launch of Perplexity Computer, it was only natural to partner to unlock Chronograph data within it. The value of Chronograph's connector goes beyond speed and accessibility; an analyst can be confident when querying portfolio data and analyzing investments in Perplexity. This is key for an industry where trust and accuracy are everything." The Chronograph connector for Perplexity is now available to Chronograph clients with an eligible Perplexity Pro, Max, or Enterprise subscription. Customers authenticate their own entitlements; there is no separate data contract to negotiate. Please reach out to Chronograph at [email protected] for more information. About Chronograph Chronograph was founded in 2016 to bring trust and efficiency to private capital markets data. The firm's products help institutional limited partners and general partners -- including many of the world's largest private equity and private credit investors -- streamline and automate portfolio monitoring, valuations, analytics, and reporting. The firm is backed by Sixth Street, Summit Partners, Carlyle AlpInvest, and Nasdaq, Inc. with offices in Brooklyn, NY and London, UK. For further information, visit www.chronograph.pe, and follow Chronograph on LinkedIn. Contact Fred Bower, Head of Marketing
Now Perplexity is trying to get into the local AI action
AI company Perplexity has already tried its hand at search services, advertising, personal assistants, browsers, and a hosted agent platform - and now it's getting into local AI services. The biz, having already built a hybrid agent inference orchestrator that connects cloud and local inference, has crossed that bridge to build a local agent called Portable Computer. That's in contrast to its cloud-based agent platform, Computer. Portable Computer consists of an agent harness, an orchestrator, and local AI models running on an Nvidia DGX Spark workstation, with the ability to tap into cloud inference if the situation demands. What's Nvidia DGX Spark doing there? Well, apart from the fact that DGX Spark is a capable bit of AI kit, Nvidia is said to be contemplating a $30 billion investment in Perplexity. Maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with six brand name mentions in one announcement. Perplexity casts its Portable Computer as a way to control AI costs, an issue of interest over the last few months as users find locally run open weight models may offer relief from bulging cloud bills. "Progress is most visible in very small and efficient models such as Nvidia Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B total parameters), Qwen 3.6 (35B), and Qwen 3.8 (27B)," the biz said in its post, paying somewhat more attention to Nvidia's model than other local AI enthusiasts. "These small models punch above their weight and are now capable of complex agentic workflows." What hardware might one run such models on? It may just be coincidence but Perplexity suggests Nvidia DGX Spark. "This local-first approach enables significant cost savings, since local inference avoids per-token API fees," Perplexity said. "It also naturally resolves the privacy and intellectual-property concerns: private tokens never need to be transmitted to remote clusters and remain safely within the boundary of the local device." Perplexity's current privacy policy doesn't specifically mention Portable Computer, but does reveal that Perplexity collects quite a bit of data through its other services. Most of Perplexity's pitch to potential customers involves sharing benchmark results that compare Portable Computer to two other agent harnesses, Pi and Hermes. The AI biz reports, "Across the various benchmarks, Computer matched or exceeded Hermes and Pi in accuracy while running Qwen 3.8 27B on an NVIDIA DGX Spark." And Portable Computer, Perplexity claims, proved fastest on BrowseComp and ParseBench-100 and used the fewest tokens on all three. The AI biz concludes that a decent open-weight model and capable local hardware, together with a suitable harness, "can handle real knowledge work at near-zero inference cost without requiring sensitive data to leave the device." And in the event Nvidia does invest $30 billion, Perplexity will have plenty of time to explore how much it can charge in a market where harnesses like Pi and Hermes are free. ®
Perplexity AI launches Portable Computer on-device AI agent
Perplexity AI launches Portable Computer on-device AI agent Perplexity AI Inc. today introduced Portable Computer, an artificial intelligence agent designed to run on desktops equipped with Nvidia Corp. silicon. The launch follows a report that Nvidia is weighing an investment in the startup that could value it at over $30 billion. Furthermore, Nvidia has reportedly floated the idea of licensing Perplexity's technology and hiring key employees. Portable Computer is an on-device version of a cloud-based AI agent called Perplexity Computer that debuted in February. Both tools are designed to perform multi-step tasks such as developing web applications. When Perplexity Computer encounters a particularly time-consuming task, it split the work into smaller chunks and assigns each one to a different subagent. Portable Computer brings similar capabilities to Nvidia's DGX Spark device (pictured.) It's a desktop computer that features a graphics card based on the company's Blackwell architecture. Additionally, the system ships with a 20-core central processing unit and 128 gigabytes of memory. On launch, Portable Memory uses the open-source Qwen 3.8 27B language model to automate tasks. It also supports a version of the algorithm called PPLX 27B that Perplexity optimized for the DGX Spark. The company added in a so-called multi-token prediction mechanism designed to speed up prompt processing. Qwen 3.8 27B has a context window of 256,000 tokens. In practice, however, Perplexity determined that the model struggles to process prompts with more than 100,000 tokens. The company addressed that limitation by equipping Portable Computer with a so-called context compaction feature. It summarizes lengthy prompts to bring them below the 100,00 token mark. Personal Computer includes several pre-packaged skills, file collections that include instructions and other assets designed to boost the quality of prompt responses. Perplexity says that the initial skill lineup focuses on use cases such as online research, data science and coding. Additionally, the company has added in a mechanism that verifies the accuracy of prompt responses. If Portable Computer's on-device model struggles to complete a task, it can request help from a cloud-based neural network. It can also connect to several popular software-as-a-service applications including GitHub. Portable Computer requests user permission before sending data to external tools and doesn't provide them with access to on-device files. According to Perplexity, the software also includes other guardrails. It features a sandbox that prevents language models from accessing parts of the user's operating system that aren't relevant to their work. Additionally, Portable Computer blocks unauthorized network connections. An upcoming update will expand the tool's availability beyond the DGX Spark to Windows machines that feature Nvidia RTX graphics cards. Additionally, Perplexity plans to add support for the chipmaker's recently released Nemotron 3.5 Lightning model. It's a mixture of experts algorithm with 30 billion parameters that is optimized to run on devices with limited processing capacity.
Nvidia reportedly eyes another investment in Perplexity AI at a $30B valuation
Nvidia reportedly eyes another investment in Perplexity AI at a $30B valuation Nvidia Corp. is reportedly considering making another investment in the artificial intelligence search startup Perplexity AI Inc. A report by The Information says the chipmaker is holding talks with Perplexity over an investment that could push the startup's valuation to more than $30 billion. That would represent a jump of more than 50% from the $20 billion valuation Perplexity finalized about a year ago, when it last raised money. The size of Nvidia's potential investment was not disclosed, and there's no guarantee that any deal would be reached, The Information said, citing anonymous sources who are familiar with the discussions. Neither Nvidia nor Perplexity would comment on the reported discussions. Perplexity is an attractive target for investors for its business has continued to grow at a rapid rate. According to The Information, the startup has grown its annualized revenue run rate to an impressive $750 million, up from less than $250 million at the start of the year. If true, that would mean it has managed to triple its revenue run rate in just eight months. One of the main reasons for that impressive growth is Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based AI agent that was first released in April for Mac computers and later expanded to Windows devices. Perplexity Computer is designed to automate computer tasks for professional users. It acts as a general-purpose digital worker that can access authorized files and applications on a user's computer. Users can ask it to create or edit Word documents, update Excel spreadsheets, organize files, conduct online research and complete workflows involving multiple applications. The proposed investment would deepen an existing relationship between Nvidia and Perplexity. The chipmaker is already one of its main financial backers, alongside Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos and SoftBank Group Corp. Nvidia has become an increasingly important partner for AI startups like Perplexity, and sees its bet on the startup as an investment in its future. As the world's top supplier of silicon for high-frequency AI inference, it has a vested interest in making sure that the search layer - which is a massive compute ecosystem - remains aligned with its chip ecosystem. What Nvidia doesn't want is for the likes of Perplexity and others to go sniffing around rival chipmakers such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Cerebras Systems Inc., which both offer alternative chips for AI inference. In that way, Nvidia is investing in Perplexity as a kind of insurance policy to safeguard its future revenue stream against possible shifts in AI search architecture. Perplexity's strategic importance to Nvidia is amplified by its distribution efforts, such as its integration with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s Bixby assistant, which brings its search capabilities to around 800 million devices globally. The AI search firm is also believed to be fixed on a 2028 initial public offering, which means Nvidia has a clear timeline to realize a return on its investment. Nvidia's broader portfolio includes many of its major compute customers, including OpenAI Group PBC, Anthropic PBC, SpaceX Corp.'s xAI, Poolside Inc. and Safe Superintelligence Inc. It shows how the chipmaker has taken a systematic approach to ensuring its market dominance. By supplying the critical infrastructure and acting as a key investor at the application layer, Nvidia has effectively built a self-reinforcing cycle of demand for its chips. Nvidia is also trying to provide direct funding to customers that need to invest in its AI compute hardware. It recently struck a deal with six of Wall Street's biggest financial institutions to provide more than $500 billion in financing for AI infrastructure projects, including its own and those of its customers. Meanwhile, Perplexity has been racing to build out the infrastructure foundation it needs to support its own growth. Earlier this year, it struck a $750 million deal with Microsoft Corp. that will see it adopt that company's Azure cloud services to help run its AI workloads.
Perplexity's revenue tripled to $750 million ahead of Nvidia's $30 billion talks
The deal would add Perplexity to Nvidia's investments in its own customers. Nvidia has started discussions to invest in Perplexity's next funding round at a valuation of over $30 billion, according to a report from The Information. The deal would boost the valuation of the AI search startup by more than 50% in a year. It would also provide another Nvidia-backed customer with fresh capital. The talks surfaced on Sunday, sourced to people familiar with the discussions. Perplexity revenue triples while its valuation climbs past $30B The proposed round would value Perplexity at more than $30 billion, up from its $20 billion valuation last September. That is an increase of more than 50% in about a year. Nvidia is pondering whether to join. Both Nvidia and Perplexity declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. Perplexity's investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Japan's SoftBank Group. The company's annualized revenue has grown to over $750 million from less than $250 million at the beginning of the year, tripling in about eight months. Perplexity Computer sells to professionals to automate tasks on their machines. The growing demand for AI search and autonomous agents is feeding investors' appetite. Perplexity is aiming to go public in 2028, a timeline CEO Aravind Srinivas detailed in a June interview. The company would move ahead regardless of how the market treats the planned listings of OpenAI and Anthropic, he said. Regulators flag Nvidia's habit of funding its own customers Nvidia has invested in companies that are also its customers or suppliers. The list includes cloud providers CoreWeave and Nebius and AI data firm Mercor, which is reported to be in talks with Nvidia at a valuation of $20 billion. Critics call the arrangement circular financing. The supplier funds the buyer, the buyer spends that money again on the supplier's products, and demand can look stronger than it is. In its 2026 Annual Report, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) listed circular financing as one of the three greatest risks to global financial stability. As Cryptopolitan has reported, the Bank of England (BOE) has warned that the speed of AI investment is unprecedented in history. Chips are "productive, they're long-lived, they're fungible, they're flexible," CEO Jensen Huang said of the financing program. The company guarantees up to 25% of its chips' residual value if resale falls short at the end of a Earlier this year, Perplexity agreed to run workloads on Microsoft's Azure for $750 million. The company inked that deal while fighting Amazon in court over shopping features in its AI tools, Cryptopolitan earlier reported. Amazon Web Services would continue to be the company's preferred cloud provider, a Perplexity spokesperson said at the time. Nvidia shares fell 2.16% to $210.09 in Monday afternoon trading, down from Friday's $214.72 close.
NVIDIA Eyes Investment in Perplexity at Over USD 30 Billion Valuation
NVIDIA is reportedly looking to invest in Perplexity at a valuation exceeding USD 30 billion as the AI startup sees a sharp rise in revenue. NVIDIA could soon make a big move in the AI startup space. According to recent reports, the company is about to invest a significant amount in , which will increase the company's value to more than USD 30 billion. If the multi-billion-dollar deal succeeds, it will likely increase Perplexity's valuation by more than 50%. However, neither NVIDIA nor Perplexity has confirmed the talks. The timing is also important. Perplexity's annual revenue has now crossed USD 750 million. This is a sharp jump from less than USD 250 million at the start of 2026. Much of the growth is coming from its AI products, including Perplexity Computer. The company has also signed a USD 750 million deal with Microsoft for Azure cloud services.
Nvidia Investment Perplexity Valued Over $30 Billion
Nvidia is in talks to make one of its boldest artificial intelligence bets yet, negotiating an investment in Perplexity that would value the AI search startup at more than $30 billion, according to reporting from The Information and confirmed by Reuters. If finalized, the Nvidia investment in Perplexity would mark a sharp jump from where the company stood just a year ago, and it would deepen a relationship between the two companies that dates back further than most people realize. Key takeaways * Nvidia is negotiating an investment in Perplexity at a valuation above $30 billion, more than 50 percent higher than last year's funding round. * Perplexity's annualized revenue has tripled from $250 million to over $750 million, helped by its "Perplexity Computer" AI agent. * Nvidia previously considered an acqui-hire of Perplexity's technology and staff before shifting toward an investment deal. * Perplexity joined Nvidia's Nemotron Coalition in March to back open AI models as a counterweight to Chinese development efforts. * CEO Aravind Srinivas is reportedly weighing an IPO around 2028, after the company has raised more than $1.7 billion to date. Nvidia's Talks to Back Perplexity at a $30 Billion-Plus Valuation The core of the story is straightforward but significant: Nvidia is negotiating an investment in Perplexity at a price tag north of $30 billion, a figure that would represent more than a 50 percent increase from the company's last funding round a year ago. That kind of jump, in this market, doesn't happen without a business story to back it up. Reuters, citing a report from The Information, corroborated the talks on Monday, adding weight to what had initially circulated as a single-source scoop. The chipmaker's interest in Perplexity isn't new, either. Nvidia first put money into the startup back in late 2023, well before generative search became a crowded and increasingly competitive category. That earlier bet is worth remembering, because Nvidia had also floated a different path at one point: an acqui-hire that would have brought Perplexity's technology and staff directly under its own roof rather than leaving the company independent. The fact that talks have circled back to an investment, at a far higher valuation, suggests Nvidia sees more value in Perplexity as a standalone company than as an absorbed team. Why the growth story matters here Perplexity has not had an easy run competitively. Once known primarily for its AI research capabilities, the company has lost some ground as ChatGPT and Claude rolled out their own research modes, leaning on much larger consumer bases to pull users in. That backdrop makes the revenue numbers behind this funding round even more relevant to understanding why Nvidia is willing to pay up now. Inside Perplexity's Revenue Surge Perplexity's annualized revenue has tripled, climbing from $250 million to more than $750 million. That's the kind of growth curve that tends to justify a steep valuation jump, and it appears to be driven less by search traffic and more by a shift in what the product actually does for users. A meaningful piece of that growth traces back to "Perplexity Computer," an AI agent built to carry out automated tasks rather than simply answer questions. Agentic tools like this tend to consume far more computing power per interaction than a standard chatbot query, since completing a multi-step task requires many more tokens than returning a single answer. That higher token consumption likely explains a large part of the revenue jump, and it's also exactly the kind of usage pattern that benefits a chip supplier sitting on the other side of the transaction. What Perplexity Computer changes Rather than acting as a search engine that returns links and summaries, Perplexity Computer is designed to execute tasks on a user's behalf. That distinction matters commercially: automated, multi-step work tends to be billed differently and consumed more intensively than a simple lookup, which helps explain how a company facing tougher competition in plain search still managed to triple its revenue run rate. A Bigger Bet Amid Nvidia's AI Investment Spree Nvidia's interest in Perplexity fits inside a much larger pattern. In March, Perplexity joined Nvidia's Nemotron Coalition, an initiative built around promoting open AI models as a counterweight to Chinese development efforts, including rivals like DeepSeek. That alignment gives Nvidia an ecosystem partner it can point to in the broader geopolitical race over open AI models, not just a search app it happens to own a stake in. The Perplexity talks also sit alongside a string of comparable moves. Nvidia recently struck deals with Poolside, Groq, and Enfabrica. Groq's round valued the company at $20 billion, and Enfabrica's came in at $900 million. Poolside's arrangement went further still, reportedly combining a $6 billion deal to license its AI models with an additional $1 billion investment that valued the startup at $12 billion, alongside job offers extended to more than 100 of its employees. Taken together, these deals paint a picture of a chipmaker spreading capital across the AI landscape at a pace few competitors can match. That pace hasn't gone unquestioned. Technology critic Ed Zitron argued that Nvidia is "effectively bailing out anyone in the AI industry as a means of inflating their valuations and keeping them buying compute," adding that the company is "spending every dollar it takes to stop any prominent AI company from dying, because the perception alone would be lethal to the AI narrative." It's a pointed read on a dynamic that's easy to verify from the deal structures themselves: much of the money Nvidia hands out in these rounds tends to flow back to Nvidia as revenue once portfolio companies turn around and buy its chips. That circularity is worth sitting with. Every Nvidia investment in Perplexity, Poolside, Groq, or Enfabrica raises a valuation on paper, but it also feeds Nvidia's own hardware sales pipeline, blurring the line between strategic partnership and self-reinforcing demand generation. Whether that structure proves durable will likely depend on how independently these AI companies can grow revenue once the initial funding cycle plays out. What's Next: IPO Talk and Industry Implications Perplexity has raised more than $1.7 billion to date, and CEO Aravind Srinivas is reportedly considering an IPO around 2028, according to CNBC. A public listing that far out gives the company room to keep scaling its agentic products before facing the scrutiny that comes with being a publicly traded company, but it also means today's valuation talks will set the baseline investors measure future rounds against. For Nvidia, locking in a position now, at a valuation already more than 50 percent above last year's round, means capturing upside early in a company whose usage patterns happen to align neatly with its own chip demand. For Perplexity, the capital and credibility that come with a marquee investor help offset the competitive pressure from bigger, consumer-facing rivals. Neither side is hiding what it stands to gain, and neither outcome is guaranteed until the deal actually closes. FAQ What is the valuation of Perplexity in the current Nvidia investment talks? Nvidia is negotiating an investment in Perplexity at a valuation above $30 billion. What factors contributed to Perplexity's revenue growth? Perplexity's annualized revenue tripled mainly due to "Perplexity Computer," an AI agent for automated tasks that drives higher token consumption than standard search queries. How does Nvidia benefit financially from investing in AI firms like Perplexity? Investment money often flows back to Nvidia as revenue when portfolio companies purchase Nvidia chips to run the products that money helped fund. When is Perplexity considering going public with an IPO? Perplexity's CEO, Aravind Srinivas, is considering an IPO around 2028, according to CNBC.
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.
Nvidia discusses Perplexity investment at $30 billion-plus valuation: Reports- Moneycontrol.com
Nvidia is in talks to invest in Perplexity as part of an equity funding round that would value the AI startup at more than $30 billion, The Information reported on Sunday, 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, according to the report. Perplexity's annualized revenue has risen to more than $750 million from less than $250 million at the start of the year, the report said. Part of the revenue growth has been driven by Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based AI agent used by professionals to automate computer-based tasks, the report added, citing people familiar with the matter. Perplexity declined to comment on the Information report, while Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Information reported in September last year that Perplexity had finalized a $20 billion valuation. Earlier this year, Perplexity signed a $750 million agreement with Microsoft to use its Azure cloud service, according to a Bloomberg News report. Perplexity is planning to go public in 2028 regardless of how the market receives the listings of Anthropic and OpenAI, CEO Aravind Srinivas told CNBC in an interview in June. The startup's high-profile backers, along with Nvidia, include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Japan's SoftBank Group.
Nvidia shows interest in Perplexity as valuation hits USD 30 billion
Nvidia is reportedly interested in investing in Perplexity, whose valuation exceeds USD 30 billion. TIONGKOK - Nvidia NVDA.O is in talks to invest in Perplexity as part of an equity funding round that would value the AI startup at more than USD 30 billion, The Information reported on Sunday (22/8), citing sources familiar with the discussions. The funding round would increase Perplexity's valuation by more than 50% compared with its previous funding round a year ago, according to the report. As quoted by Reuters, Perplexity's annualised revenue has risen to more than USD 750 million, from less than USD 250 million at the beginning of the year, according to the report. Part of the revenue growth was driven by Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based AI agent used by professionals to automate various computer-based tasks, the report added, citing sources familiar with the matter. Perplexity declined to comment on The Information's report, while Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Information reported in September last year that Perplexity had finalised a valuation of USD 20 billion. Earlier this year, Perplexity signed a USD 750 million deal with Microsoft MSFT.O to use Microsoft's Azure cloud services, Bloomberg News reported. Perplexity plans to go public in 2028, regardless of how markets respond to the listings of Anthropic and OpenAI, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said in an interview with CNBC in June. The startup's major backers, besides Nvidia, include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Japan's SoftBank Group 9984.T. (DK/ZH)
Nvidia Eyeing Investment in AI Startup Perplexity
NVIDIA Corporation is the world leader in the design, development, and marketing of programmable graphics processors. The group also develops associated software. Net sales break down by family of products as follows: - computing and networking solutions (89%): data center platforms and infrastructure, Ethernet interconnect solutions, high-performance computing solutions, platforms and solutions for autonomous and intelligent vehicles, solutions for enterprise artificial intelligence infrastructure, crypto-currency mining processors, embedded computer boards for robotics, teaching, learning and artificial intelligence development, etc.; - graphics processors (11%): for PCs, game consoles, video game streaming platforms, workstations, etc. (GeForce, NVIDIA RTX, Quadro brands, etc.). The group also offers laptops, desktops, gaming computers, computer peripherals (monitors, mice, joysticks, remote controls, etc.), software for visual and virtual computing, platforms for automotive infotainment systems and cloud collaboration platforms. Net sales break down by industry between data storage (88.3%), gaming (8.7%), professional visualization (1.4%), automotive (1.3%) and other (0.3%). Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: the United States (46.9%), Singapore (18.2%), Taiwan (15.8%), China and Hong Kong (13.1%) and other (6%).
Nvidia is in talks to back Perplexity at more than $30bn
The chipmaker also weighed a technology licensing arrangement alongside the equity cheque, according to The Information. Nvidia has been discussing an investment in Perplexity that would value the AI search company at more than $30bn, according to The Information, which reported that the two sides also considered a technology licensing arrangement alongside the equity cheque. The talks are the latest turn in a relationship that already runs deeper than the usual investor-and-customer arrangement, since Perplexity was among the first named takers for Nvidia's Vera CPU. At more than $30bn, the valuation would represent a jump of over 50% on the roughly $20bn Perplexity carried after its last reported round, and it would land the company among the most richly priced private AI businesses in the world. The round itself is described as worth billions of dollars, though neither the size of Nvidia's proposed stake nor the identity of the other participants has been reported. Neither company has commented publicly, and it is not clear whether the licensing component is still live or was set aside during the negotiations. What makes the discussions unremarkable, in one sense, is how routine this kind of cheque has become for Nvidia. Its equity commitments passed $40bn in 2026 alone, spread across model developers, neoclouds, and infrastructure companies that, almost without exception, buy Nvidia silicon with the money. That circularity has started to attract a different sort of attention. When the company announced roughly $750bn of AI-related commitments, its own credit default swaps widened to record levels, a signal from the debt market that the arrangement looks less like diversification than like a supplier financing its own order book. Perplexity is an unusually visible example of the type. Founded in 2022 and led by Aravind Srinivas, it built a conversational search product that answers queries directly rather than returning a page of blue links and has spent the past two years trying to make it durable enough to justify its price. In August 2025, the company made an unsolicited $34.5bn offer for Google's Chrome browser, a bid roughly double its own valuation at the time, which Google never entertained. It has since pushed its own AI browser, Comet, as the vehicle for what Srinivas calls agentic browsing. The competitive picture has not softened while all this was going on. Google has folded conversational answers into its own results page, OpenAI has pushed ChatGPT further into search and shipped a browser of its own, and both arrive with distribution that Perplexity has to buy or build. Perplexity has not disclosed audited figures, and the widely circulated estimates of its annualised run rate come from investor briefings and secondary reporting rather than the company itself, which makes any multiple attached to a $30bn valuation an exercise in faith. Nvidia is already on the cap table, having taken part in earlier rounds that also drew in Jeff Bezos. A licensing deal, had it been agreed, would have been a rarer move, giving Perplexity access to Nvidia technology on terms that sit outside the ordinary customer relationship, and giving Nvidia a stake in how AI search actually gets built rather than merely in the hardware underneath it. For now, the round is unconfirmed, which is worth holding onto. Reports of AI valuations have a habit of arriving well before term sheets are signed, and Perplexity itself has been the subject of several such reports over the past 18 months, at $14bn, at $18bn, and at $20bn, each of which arrived with people familiar with the matter attached and each of which took months to settle into a number anyone would put their name to. Nvidia reports its next quarterly results in November. Whether a Perplexity stake shows up in the investment line by then will say more about the pace of this cycle than the valuation itself does.
