Nvidia in Talks to Invest in AI Startup Perplexity at Over US$30 Billion Valuation
Nvidia is in talks to invest in AI search startup Perplexity at a valuation exceeding US$30 billion, which would represent a more than 50% increase from the roughly US$20 billion valuation in its last funding round about a year ago. Perplexity, founded in 2022, saw annualized revenue climb from less than US$250 million at the start of 2026 to over US$750 million, with a gross margin of about 60%. The company has raised over US$1.7 billion from investors including Nvidia, and is considering an IPO around 2028. The deal is not yet finalized.
If the deal is completed, Perplexity's valuation would rise by more than 50% from the roughly US$20 billion at its previous funding round about a year ago. The funding negotiations are still ongoing and the investment has not been finalized.
Founded in 2022, Perplexity initially focused on AI conversational search services and has since launched Perplexity Computer, an AI agent product that can automatically execute complex tasks on computers. The company's annualized revenue has climbed from less than US$250 million at the start of 2026 to more than US$750 million, with recent growth driven mainly by Perplexity Computer and other businesses. The product targets professional users and can automate various computer-based tasks, directly competing with similar agent products from OpenAI and Anthropic. Perplexity currently has a gross margin of about 60%, though this figure does not account for costs associated with non-paying and trial users.
Perplexity has raised more than US$1.7 billion to date, with investors including Nvidia, New Enterprise Associates, Accel and SoftBank. Chief Executive Aravind Srinivas has previously said the company is considering an initial public offering around 2028. Perplexity does not train base models from scratch; instead, it routes AI requests to the most suitable model based on the task. Its business spans AI search, Perplexity Computer, and access to third-party open-source and closed-source models.
The partnership between Nvidia and Perplexity has deepened. In March 2026, Perplexity joined Nvidia's Nemotron Alliance, becoming one of its partners in promoting open-source model development. Perplexity has said it plans to use Nvidia's Vera central processing units to run agentic AI queries, and earlier signed a chip usage agreement with CoreWeave, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia. In early July 2026, Perplexity announced that it would adopt Nvidia's new CPU chips.
Nvidia has made several moves in the AI software space recently. In addition to negotiating an investment in Perplexity, Nvidia has agreed to pay US$6 billion for a license to AI model development software from startup Poolside, and to invest an additional US$1 billion in that company at a pre-money valuation of US$12 billion. Separately, Nvidia has made job offers to more than 100 employees involved in developing the open-source model Laguna. Nvidia had previously considered spending billions of dollars to license technology from Perplexity and absorb some of its employees, but the talks ultimately shifted to an equity investment.