AI search startup Perplexity is reportedly in talks with Nvidia for an investment at a valuation above $30 billion, roughly double its recent mark, according to industry reports. The talks come on the back of annualized revenue near $750 million, up from about $232 million at the end of 2025, reflecting rapid growth in the AI answer engine market.
Perplexity also shipped Hybrid Compute on Mac, a feature that keeps sensitive files and workloads on-device while using the cloud for heavy lifting, lowering the compliance barrier to deploying AI tools over sensitive files. The Nvidia-scale funding signals staying power for Perplexity as it competes with established search players and other AI startups.
The potential investment is part of a broader trend of consolidation in the AI sector, where frontier funding is concentrating at the top even as open-weight models collapse the cost of near-frontier capability. Industry observers see the widening split between companies that are raising capital and those being commoditized as a defining structural trend in the AI industry.
