Organisation · company · US

Perplexity

A search company built around an "answer engine" that retrieves web pages and uses a language model to write a directly cited answer rather than returning a list of links.

15 entries · December 2022 – March 2026

Perplexity is a search company founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas and colleagues, built around what it calls an "answer engine" — instead of returning a list of links, it retrieves web pages and uses a language model to write a direct answer with inline citations. That approach, an early example of what became known as retrieval-augmented generation, positioned it as a challenger to both Google search and chatbots that answered without sources. Its valuation rose sharply through 2025, reaching around $20 billion, and it expanded into an AI web browser, Comet, released free worldwide in October 2025. The same method has made it one of the most heavily sued AI companies over publisher content: news and reference organisations including The New York Times, Encyclopaedia Britannica and Dow Jones allege it reproduces their work without a licence, claims Perplexity contests.

Category
Agents & applied AI
Founded
2022
HQ
San Francisco, US
Funding
~$20bn valuation (2025)
Key people
Aravind Srinivas

Appears alongside

Featured in threads

Tracks

  • Courts & copyright 7
  • Money & business 3
  • Security & misuse 2
  • Models & capabilities 2
  • Open weights & ecosystem 1
  • Culture & impact 1

  1. Amazon wins, then loses, injunction against Perplexity's Comet shopping agent

    Judge Maxine Chesney found Perplexity's Comet browser likely violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing Amazon's account pages; the Ninth Circuit later vacated the injunction, ruling users, not Perplexity, do the accessing.

    Courts & copyright · Security & misuse

  2. Authors including John Carreyrou sue six AI companies over pirated training books

    Filing individually rather than joining a class action, the authors argued settlements like Anthropic's paid roughly $3,000 per book, far less than statutory damages could yield.

    Courts & copyright

  3. New York Times sues Perplexity for copyright infringement

    The suit, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleged near-verbatim reproduction of Times articles and separately accused Perplexity of fabricating claims falsely attributed to the paper.

    Courts & copyright

  4. Chicago Tribune sues Perplexity for copyright infringement

    Tribune Publishing and MediaNews Group, both controlled by Alden Global Capital, alleged Perplexity ignored opt-out and robots.txt requests and sought damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work.

    Courts & copyright

  5. Reddit sues Perplexity and scraping firms over AI data collection

    Reddit alleged Perplexity used scraping firms to pull its posts indirectly from Google search results rather than pay for a licence, as OpenAI and Google had.

    Courts & copyright

  6. Perplexity opens Comet browser free to everyone worldwide

    Comet dropped its Max-subscription requirement and waitlist, three months after a limited July launch drew a waitlist Perplexity said reached millions.

    Models & capabilities

  7. Britannica and Merriam-Webster sue Perplexity for copyright infringement

    The complaint alleged verbatim reproduction of encyclopaedia and dictionary entries, plus AI-generated errors falsely attributed to the two brands as trademark harm.

    Courts & copyright

  8. Perplexity raises $200m at $20bn valuation

    The third valuation jump in three months, following an $18bn round in July and a $14bn round led by Accel in June.

    Money & business

  9. Brave researchers disclose indirect prompt injection flaw in Perplexity's Comet browser

    Brave said it reported the flaw on 25 July and Perplexity's fix was incomplete on retesting; the underlying weakness reportedly remained after disclosure.

    Security & misuse

  10. Perplexity raises $100M, reaches $18B valuation

    Perplexity closes a $100M round at an $18B valuation, up from $14B months earlier, as ARR approaches $200M.

    Money & business

  11. Perplexity open-sources decensored DeepSeek R1 variant

    Perplexity retrained R1 on 40,000 examples covering roughly 300 CCP-restricted topics, reporting near-identical math and knowledge benchmark scores to the original.

    Open weights & ecosystem

  12. BBC study finds AI assistants distort news in over half of responses

    Testing ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity on 100 BBC stories, researchers found significant issues in 51% of responses and altered or invented quotes in 13%.

    Culture & impact

  13. Perplexity raises $500M at $9B valuation

    Perplexity closes a $500M round led by IVP at a $9B valuation, roughly tripling the $3B figure SoftBank had set six months earlier.

    Money & business

  14. Dow Jones and New York Post sue Perplexity for copyright infringement

    News Corp titles sue Perplexity in New York, alleging its RAG search product reproduces their articles verbatim without a licence.

    Courts & copyright

  15. Perplexity launches Ask, its answer engine

    Answers came in prose with inline numbered citations to sources, distinguishing it from ChatGPT, launched a week earlier, which could not browse the web or show sources.

    Models & capabilities

Also mentioned in 9 entries

Referenced in passing — Perplexity isn't the main subject of these.