Perplexity AI, or simply Perplexity, is a privately heldSan Francisco-based software company offering a web search engine that processes user queries and synthesizes responses.[4] It uses large language models and incorporates real-time web search capabilities, enabling it to provide responses based on current Internet content. With a conversational approach, Perplexity allows users to ask follow-up questions and receive contextual answers. All responses include citations to their sources from the Internet to support transparency and allow users to verify information.[5] A free public version is available, while a paid Pro subscription offers access to more advanced language models and additional features.[6]
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 an app for iOS and Android.[6][5][12] In February 2023, Perplexity reported two million unique visitors.[5] By April 2024, Perplexity had raised $165 million in funding, valuing the company at over $1 billion.[13] As of June 2025, Perplexity closed a $500 million round of funding that elevated its valuation to $14 billion.[14] Investors in Perplexity AI have included Jeff Bezos, Tobias Lütke, Nat Friedman, Nvidia, and Databricks.[15][16][13] During Bloomberg’s Tech Summit 2025, Srinivas shared that the company processed 780 million queries in May 2025, experiencing more than 20% month-over-month growth, processing around 30 million queries daily.[17]
In July 2024, Perplexity announced the launch of a new publishers' program to share ad revenue with partners.[18]
On January 18, 2025, the day before the impending U.S. ban on Chinese social media app TikTok, Perplexity submitted a proposal for a merger with TikTok US.[19][20][21][22]
Perplexity products perform web search, summarize the search results, and produce text with inline citations[15]. They also enable users to generate customizable web pages and research presentations based on user prompts.[23] Perplexity services bundle access to multiple products. Perplexity adopted a freemium model for individual users, while a paid enterprise service is also available.[13]
Subscription service (Pro)
Perplexity Pro, the premium subscription tier of Perplexity AI, provides access to an API[15] and also enables users to search both internal files and web content. It allows the user to select between backend models such as GPT-4.1, o4-mini, Claude 4.0, Grok 4 and Gemini Pro 2.5.[24] The company has also developed its own models Sonar (based on Llama 3.3)[25] and R1 1776 (based on DeepSeek R1).[26]
As of 2025, the Pro version is available for free for one year
to Samsung Galaxy phone and tablet owners in the United States; eligible users simply need to download the Perplexity app from the Galaxy Store and sign in, after which their account is automatically upgraded to Pro at no cost.[27]
Internal Knowledge Search enables Pro and Enterprise Pro users to simultaneously search across web content and internal documents. Users can upload and search through Excel, Word, PDF, and other common file formats. Enterprise Pro users have a limit of 500 files for upload and indexing.[30]
Shopping hub
Perplexity's Shopping Hub launched in November 2024 with backing by Amazon and Nvidia.[31]
It is an AI-powered online shopping platform that enables users to search, discover, and purchase products directly through Perplexity’s interface. Key features include a one-click checkout for Perplexity Pro members in the U.S., a visual product search with Snap to Shop, and unbiased, AI-generated product recommendations. The hub leverages Shopify for real-time product data, offers merchants the ability to showcase inventory, and aims to make the online shopping experience faster and more convenient for users.[32][33][34][35]
Finance
In October 2024, Perplexity AI introduced new finance-related features, including looking up stock prices and company earnings data. The tool provides real-time stock quotes and price tracking, industry peer comparisons and basic financial analysis tools. The platform sources its financial data from Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) to ensure accuracy.[36][37]
Assistant
Screenshot of Perplexity (2025)
In January 2025, Perplexity launched the Perplexity Assistant, an AI-powered tool designed to enhance the functionality of its search engine. Since April of 2025, the assistant is available on Android and iOS devices[38], and is integrated into the Perplexity app. It can perform tasks across multiple apps, such as hailing a ride or searching for a song, and is capable of maintaining context across actions, allowing for more seamless task management.[12] This enables event reminders, including finding the right date and time and creating corresponding calendar entries. The assistant is also multi-modal, meaning it can use a phone's camera to provide answers about the user's surroundings or on-screen content.[12]
Initially, the Perplexity Assistant is free in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Korean, and Hindi. Perplexity has acknowledged that the assistant is still in development and may not always function as expected. For instance, certain features, such as summarizing unread emails or upcoming calendar events, require users to enable a workaround based on notifications.[12]
Comet
In July 2025, Perplexity launched Comet, an AI browser based on Chromium. Initially, access to the browser is limited to users subscribed to the highest, most expensive subscription tier, with broader availability expected over time.[39] A key feature of the browser is the integration of the Perplexity search engine,[40] which enables users to perform a variety of tasks such as generating article summaries, describing an image, conducting research about a topic and composing emails.[41]
Controversies
Copyright and trademark infringement allegations
In June 2024, Forbes publicly criticized Perplexity for using their content. According to Forbes, Perplexity published a story largely copied from a proprietary Forbes article without mentioning or prominently citing Forbes. In response, Srinivas said that the feature had some "rough edges" and accepted feedback but maintained that Perplexity only "aggregates" rather than plagiarizes information.[42][43] In October 2024, The New York Times sent a cease-and-desist notice to Perplexity to stop accessing and using NYT content, claiming that Perplexity is violating its copyright by scraping data from its website.[44] In June 2024, Dow Jones and New York Post filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, alleging copyright infringement. The lawsuit also alleges that Perplexity attributed quotes to an article on F-16 jets for Ukraine that never appeared in the original article.[45] Perplexity released a blog post to address the lawsuits on October 24, 2024. It stated that the complaints are misleading and reiterated that it was open to revenue-sharing programs.[46] On January 31, 2025, Perplexity was sued in the United States for alleged trademark infringement by Perplexity Solved Solutions (PSS), a software firm founded in 2017.[47] The lawsuit claims that Perplexity AI's use of the name "Perplexity" violates PSS's federally registered trademark and could cause consumer confusion. PSS had previously declined an offer from Perplexity AI to purchase the trademark in 2023. The suit seeks to prevent Perplexity AI from using the name in its branding and marketing.[48] In June 2025, the BBC threatened legal action against Perplexity AI, demanding that the company stop the unauthorized scraping of its content, delete all retained BBC material used in training its models, and provide financial compensation for the infringement of its intellectual property rights.[49]
Stealth web crawlers
In June 2024, separate investigations by the magazine Wired and web developer Robb Knight found that Perplexity does not respect the Robot Exclusion Protocol (or robots.txt) standard, which may include requests for web crawlers to not scrape sections of the site's content, despite Perplexity claiming the opposite. Perplexity also lists the IP address ranges and user agent strings of their web crawlers publicly, but according to Wired and Robb Knight, they use undisclosed IP addresses and spoofed user agent strings when ignoring robots.txt.[50][51] In response, Srinivas stated that Perplexity is not ignoring robots.txt, but suggested it relied on third-party web crawlers that do.[52] When asked, Srinivas declined to say that Perplexity would cease scraping Wired content using third parties.[52]
In August 2025, Cloudflare published research finding that Perplexity was using undeclared "stealth" web crawlers to bypass Web application firewalls and robots.txt files intended to block Perplexity crawlers.[53][54] Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince tweeted that Perplexity acts "more like North Korean hackers" than like a reputable AI company.[55]
