Pushing past chatbot territory

Perplexity’s move from AI search into AI agents seems to be working.

The Financial Times reported that the company’s revenue jumped 50% in the last month, with estimated annual recurring revenue passing $450 million in March.

That marks a shift from being known mainly for AI search to building tools that can actually do tasks for users.

Perplexity says it now has more than 100 million monthly active users across its search and agent products, plus tens of thousands of enterprise customers.

It makes money through consumer and business subscriptions priced between $20 and $200 a month.

Its growth is still smaller than some of the biggest AI players.

Cursor’s ARR has reportedly hit $2 billion, while Anthropic said it reached $19 billion by the end of February. OpenAI said it made $20 billion last year.

This week, Perplexity also launched a tax agent for its “Computer” product.

The company says it uses updated IRS materials and current tax rules, rather than relying only on older training data like general chatbots.

That could matter. A TaxSlayer test found that four major AI chatbots got tax refunds or payments wrong by an average of more than $2,000 across eight fictional scenarios.

Don’t say we didn’t tell you about agents. - MV