Perplexity spent August 2025 trying to buy Google’s Chrome browser with an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer, a bid worth roughly double the company itself at the time. A year on, Aravind Srinivas’ AI search startup is on the other side of the table. Nvidia is in discussions to invest in Perplexity at a valuation of more than $30 billion, The Information reported, citing people with knowledge of the talks.That would be a jump of over 50 percent from the roughly $20 billion Perplexity carried after its last reported round. The round is described as worth billions of dollars, though neither Nvidia’s stake nor the other participants have been named. The Information also reported that the two sides weighed a technology licensing arrangement alongside the equity cheque, which would be the more unusual half of the deal.
Perplexity’s revenue has tripled this year, and an AI agent is doing a lot of the lifting
Annualised revenue has climbed past $750 million from under $250 million at the start of 2026, according to The Information. A good chunk of that growth comes from Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based AI agent professionals use to automate desk work. The company handles more than 400 million search queries a month and has been pushing Comet, its own browser, as the home for what Srinivas calls agentic browsing.None of these figures are audited. Perplexity has not published its books, and the run-rate numbers circulating come from investor briefings rather than the company, which makes any multiple attached to $30 billion a matter of trust.
Nvidia keeps writing cheques to the companies that spend the money on Nvidia chips
Nvidia is already on Perplexity’s cap table alongside Jeff Bezos and SoftBank, and the two have a supply relationship too. Perplexity was among the first names Nvidia announced for its Vera CPU, with enterprise infrastructure VP Nate Kupp saying the chip ran agentic coding tasks about 1.5 times faster than what the company had been using.Nvidia’s equity commitments crossed $40 billion in 2026 alone, almost all of it going to firms that turn around and buy its silicon. When it disclosed around $750 billion in AI-related commitments, its credit default swaps widened to record levels.Perplexity signed a $750 million Azure deal with Microsoft earlier this year and told CNBC in June it plans to list in 2028 whatever happens to Anthropic and OpenAI. Nvidia reports results in November. Whether a Perplexity stake appears in the investment line by then is the first real test of the reporting.