Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Perplexity’s revenue has surged 50% in just a month as it pushes deeper into AI agents, according to a report by the Financial Times.
The company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) crossed $450 million as of March, the report said. This rise has been supported by the launch of its new agentic tool, Perplexity Computer, along with a shift towards usage-based pricing, it added.
A company executive told FT that customer retention remains “strong”, though no specific figures were shared.
This growth comes alongside a clear change in strategy from when the company launched in 2022. Perplexity is moving away from its chatbot-style search engine, once seen as a serious challenger to Google, and placing greater emphasis on AI agents that can carry out tasks for users. The shift mirrors a wider industry move, as companies adjust their products and pricing to reflect the higher costs of running these systems.
As part of this transition, the company has been expanding its product range. In 2024, it launched Comet, an AI-powered web browser that can act on a user’s behalf, handling tasks such as shopping, summarising social media feeds and sending emails through voice or text commands.
Building on that, Perplexity introduced its agent product Computer in February, which chief executive Aravind Srinivas described as the “next big thing”. It also rolled out Model Council, a feature that lets users compare responses from different AI models side by side.
This broader product push has helped the company scale its user base to more than 100 million monthly active users, including tens of thousands of enterprise customers. Revenue is generated through subscriptions priced between $20 and $200 per month.
At the same time, the move to usage-based pricing marks a shift in how Perplexity earns money. Premium users are given a set number of credits and must pay extra if they exceed them. While this can boost revenue, it also makes earnings less predictable and harder to compare over time than traditional subscription models.
Even before this change, Perplexity had seen rapid expansion, with ARR growing from $16 million to $305 million over two years, the Financial Times noted. Despite this progress, it still remains smaller than some competitors. Cursor has reached $2 billion in ARR from under $100 million in 2024, while Anthropic reported a run rate of $19 billion as of February, and OpenAI generated about $20 billion last year.
Investor confidence, however, remains strong. Perplexity was valued at $20 billion in September 2025, a significant rise from $500 million at the start of 2024.
The company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) crossed $450 million as of March, the report said. This rise has been supported by the launch of its new agentic tool, Perplexity Computer, along with a shift towards usage-based pricing, it added.
A company executive told FT that customer retention remains “strong”, though no specific figures were shared.
This growth comes alongside a clear change in strategy from when the company launched in 2022. Perplexity is moving away from its chatbot-style search engine, once seen as a serious challenger to Google, and placing greater emphasis on AI agents that can carry out tasks for users. The shift mirrors a wider industry move, as companies adjust their products and pricing to reflect the higher costs of running these systems.
As part of this transition, the company has been expanding its product range. In 2024, it launched Comet, an AI-powered web browser that can act on a user’s behalf, handling tasks such as shopping, summarising social media feeds and sending emails through voice or text commands.
Building on that, Perplexity introduced its agent product Computer in February, which chief executive Aravind Srinivas described as the “next big thing”. It also rolled out Model Council, a feature that lets users compare responses from different AI models side by side.
This broader product push has helped the company scale its user base to more than 100 million monthly active users, including tens of thousands of enterprise customers. Revenue is generated through subscriptions priced between $20 and $200 per month.
At the same time, the move to usage-based pricing marks a shift in how Perplexity earns money. Premium users are given a set number of credits and must pay extra if they exceed them. While this can boost revenue, it also makes earnings less predictable and harder to compare over time than traditional subscription models.
Even before this change, Perplexity had seen rapid expansion, with ARR growing from $16 million to $305 million over two years, the Financial Times noted. Despite this progress, it still remains smaller than some competitors. Cursor has reached $2 billion in ARR from under $100 million in 2024, while Anthropic reported a run rate of $19 billion as of February, and OpenAI generated about $20 billion last year.
Investor confidence, however, remains strong. Perplexity was valued at $20 billion in September 2025, a significant rise from $500 million at the start of 2024.
