Perplexity processed over 1 billion monthly queries by April 2026. The company grew its annual recurring revenue from $100 million in early 2025 to $500 million by April 2026. This revenue jump followed the February 2026 launch of Perplexity Computer, an agentic orchestration layer that routes tasks across 19 specialized models. Aravind Srinivas, who trained at DeepMind, Google, and OpenAI, built the engine to address the gap in real-time, cited web search. The company reached a $20 billion valuation in September 2025 and an estimated $22.6 billion by late 2025. Investors like NEA, IVP, SoftBank, Accel, and Nvidia provided $1.72 billion across 11 rounds, including $500 million in December 2024 and $200 million in September 2025. Perplexity hit 100 million monthly active users by April 2026, up from 30 to 45 million in early 2025. To support this scaling, the company committed $750 million to Microsoft Azure in January 2026. Perplexity also signed a $400 million deal with Snap Inc. in late 2025 to integrate its AI into Snapchat search. More than 20,000 organizations now use Perplexity Enterprise. The company targets $656 million in revenue for 2026.
The Comet Browser and Local Execution
Perplexity released the Comet browser on July 9, 2025. The Comet browser, which launched as a restricted tool for Max subscribers before becoming free for Mac and Windows users on October 2, 2025, uses a Chromium fork to provide agentic execution across the web. Android users got access on November 20, 2025, and iOS users got it on March 18, 2026. The "comet-agent" extension maps DOM elements to typed actions, which makes it 85% less vulnerable to UI changes than traditional Selenium-style scripting. I find the strategy of controlling the browser to capture data context and execution surface smarter than relying on a standalone app. Perplexity also secured a deal with Samsung to power the Galaxy S26’s "Hey Plex" wake word and the Samsung Browser. Comet performs shopping and checkout tasks 2x faster than Atlas and Dia. For those needing local hardware, the Perplexity Computer runs on an NVIDIA DGX Spark for $4,699, which includes 128 GB of unified system memory and a 4 TB NVMe drive. Perplexity Computer uses PPLX 27B and Qwen 3.8 27B as local models. Perplexity Computer prioritizes local execution for privacy, while ChatGPT Desktop leverages cloud-based multimodal capabilities. Perplexity Computer runs on macOS and Windows, while ChatGPT Desktop is limited to macOS and a Windows beta.
| Subscription Tier | Monthly Price | Annual Price |
|---|---|---|
| Pro | $20 | $200 |
| Max | $200 | $2,000 |
| Enterprise Pro | $40 | $400 |
| Enterprise Max | $325 | $3,250 |
Finance Research and Knowledge Graphs
Aravind Srinivas used X to invite people with active Bloomberg Terminal subscriptions to help build the future of finance research. He aims to challenge legacy tools with AI. Bloomberg Terminal costs about $32,000 per year for a single seat, while multi-terminal organizations pay around $28,320 per seat. The Bloomberg interface is dense and requires heavy training. This goal requires enterprise knowledge graphs that use triplet structures like subject, predicate, and object to connect entities. These graphs help AI agents avoid the hallucinations that occur when LLMs struggle with multi-hop reasoning or precise fact recall. You should keep in mind that 65% to 78% of large enterprises already use or pilot knowledge graphs. In 2025, Perplexity launched the "Comet Plus" program, which set aside $42.5 million to share AI-driven ad revenue with content creators. Knowledge graphs connect fragmented data across applications, databases, and APIs. This connectivity allows an AI to understand that a specific user is not the same as another user with a similar name. This capability prevents the misclassification of entities that happens when LLMs struggle with context. Koyfin, a competitor, provides plans at $39, $79, $209, or $299 per month. Will Perplexity successfully bridge the gap between massive financial datasets and agentic execution?
