Perplexity is launching a $200-per-month subscription plan for its energy customers, the corporate introduced in a weblog put up Tuesday.
The plan, Perplexity Max, provides limitless entry to the startup’s spreadsheet and report technology device, Labs, in addition to early entry to new options, together with Perplexity’s forthcoming AI-powered browser, Comet. Max subscribers may also get precedence entry to any Perplexity companies utilizing the newest frontier fashions, comparable to OpenAI o3-pro and Claude Opus 4.
With the launch of Max, Perplexity turned the newest AI supplier to supply a hyper-premium subscription tier to capitalize on its energy customers. OpenAI was the primary to take action with its $200-a-month ChatGPT Professional subscription, however Google, Anthropic, and Cursor have adopted swimsuit in latest months.
Perplexity now provides quite a lot of subscription plans. Alongside the $200-a-month Max plan, Perplexity provides a client Professional plan for $20 a month, in addition to an Enterprise Professional plan that prices $40 a month per particular person. The startup says it is going to ultimately provide a hyper-premium Max plan for Enterprise prospects as nicely.
In 2024, Perplexity generated roughly $34 million in income largely pushed by subscriptions to its $20-a-month Professional plan, however nonetheless burned about $65 million in money, in keeping with financials seen by The Info. Most of Perplexity’s money burn reportedly comes right down to heavy spending on cloud servers and shopping for entry to AI fashions from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Perplexity’s enterprise appears to have grown since final yr — it reportedly had an ARR of $80 million in January. Nonetheless, the startup must generate considerably extra income to justify its valuation. In Could, Perplexity held late-stage talks to boost $500 million at a $14 billion valuation. It’s unclear if that spherical formally closed.
However Perplexity’s competitors within the AI search market is intensifying. In latest months, Google has closely pushed AI Mode, its personal AI-powered search product, which bears a hanging resemblance to Perplexity’s app, in entrance of its customers. OpenAI has additionally built-in search extra deeply into ChatGPT in latest months and has reportedly thought of launching a browser of its personal.
One key to Perplexity’s success could also be its means to work with AI suppliers, which it depends on for AI fashions, whereas concurrently beating them within the AI search market. The added income from Perplexity Max subscribers might bolster the startup’s means to compete within the area.
