The graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia is reportedly in talks for a billion-dollar stake in the AI search service Perplexity, according to a report by The Information. The negotiated valuation is over 30 billion dollars – well over half more than a year ago. Perplexity’s revenue has more than tripled since January.
Perplexity’s revenue triples within eight months
Perplexity completed its last funding round in September 2025 at a valuation of 20 billion dollars, just two months after a round of over 100 million dollars at an 18 billion dollar valuation in July of the same year. The currently negotiated valuation of over 30 billion dollars would increase this value by more than half within a year. At the same time, the annualized revenue of the company has reportedly risen from under 250 million dollars at the beginning of the year to now over 750 million dollars – a tripling within eight months. A significant part of the growth is attributed to Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based AI agent that automates office tasks for professional users. Additionally, Perplexity entered into a 750 million dollar agreement with Microsoft earlier this year for the use of Azure cloud services. At the negotiated valuation, this would correspond to about 40 times the current year’s revenue – a factor that is not independently verified but is consistently mentioned by several financial media.
Nvidia systematically expands capital stakes in AI companies
The chip manufacturer has been an investor in Perplexity since 2023 and has also negotiated a multi-billion dollar license for its own technology in recent months, rather than directly providing capital. A stake in the current round would thus represent a shift in strategy towards a direct equity position. The pattern has now been established at Nvidia: just recently, the company guaranteed 105 billion dollars for an OpenAI data center in Ohio and it holds 9.3 percent in the AI cloud provider Nebius. In mid-August, Nvidia also agreed with six financial firms on platforms that are to provide more than 500 billion dollars in external capital for the expansion of AI data centers. In all cases, Nvidia links capital with long-term supply or usage contracts for its own chips. Observers view such deals as an attempt to reduce Nvidia’s dependence on pure chip sales while maintaining influence over the software layer of AI value creation, which also includes search and answer services. For Perplexity, a financially strong anchor investor like Nvidia ensures additional access to scarce computing capacity.
Other investors and stock market plans by 2028
In addition to Nvidia, according to Reuters, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the Japanese SoftBank Group are already among Perplexity’s investors; previous rounds have brought the total capital raised to over 1.5 billion dollars. Perplexity had previously gained attention primarily for its unsolicited takeover attempt for the Google browser Chrome worth 34.5 billion dollars last year – an offer that Google rejected, but which demonstrated the company’s ambitions beyond pure search functionality. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas stated in June that he intends to stick to an IPO for 2028 – regardless of how potential listings of Anthropic and OpenAI develop. The initiative comes at a time when AI chatbots are increasingly competing with established search engines, and Nvidia is represented as a capital provider on multiple sides of this competition simultaneously. So far, both Perplexity and Nvidia have declined to comment on the ongoing talks; details regarding the investment amount and timeline of the new round remain open.
It remains to be seen whether Nvidia will actually enter as a capital provider in Perplexity this time or again primarily secure influence through long-term chip supply contracts. If the valuation of over 30 billion dollars is confirmed, it would be another signal that investors, despite recent price fluctuations in AI stocks, are willing to pay significantly higher prices for the perceived next winners of the industry than they were a year ago.
