Nvidia is discussing an investment in artificial-intelligence search startup Perplexity as part of an equity financing round that would value the company at more than $30 billion, The Information reported, citing people familiar with the discussions. The talks have not been announced as a completed transaction, and the size or final terms of any Nvidia investment were not disclosed.
The potential round would represent another sharp step up in Perplexity’s valuation. The Information previously reported that the startup finalized a $20 billion valuation in September 2025. A valuation above $30 billion would therefore imply an increase of more than 50% in roughly a year, underscoring how quickly investor expectations around leading AI application companies continue to move.
Perplexity’s revenue growth strengthens the funding story
Perplexity’s annualized revenue has climbed to more than $750 million, from less than $250 million at the beginning of 2026, according to the report. That means the revenue run rate has more than tripled within the year. The Information attributed part of that acceleration to Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based AI agent designed to help professionals automate tasks performed on computers.
The revenue figures are important because a valuation above $30 billion would still place a substantial multiple on the company’s current annualized sales. Investors considering the round are therefore not only pricing today’s revenue, but also expectations that AI search, agents and professional automation can continue expanding rapidly. The reported figures do not establish future growth, however, and the financing discussions remain subject to change.
Nvidia’s role would deepen an existing relationship
Nvidia is already among Perplexity’s high-profile backers, alongside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Japan’s SoftBank Group. A new investment would deepen Nvidia’s financial exposure to an AI company whose services ultimately depend on large amounts of computing infrastructure, an area in which Nvidia’s accelerators and software ecosystem remain central to much of the industry.
Perplexity has also been expanding its cloud capacity. Earlier in 2026, the company signed a $750 million agreement with Microsoft to use Azure cloud services, according to a Bloomberg News report cited by Reuters. The agreement illustrates the infrastructure requirements behind AI products that must serve search queries, reasoning workloads and increasingly capable agent-style services at scale.
Read More
Perplexity Computer adds a new growth engine
Perplexity began as an AI-powered answer and search service, but Perplexity Computer broadens the company’s ambitions beyond retrieving and synthesizing information. The cloud-based agent is intended to automate computer-based work for professional users, giving Perplexity another route to monetization beyond its core search experience. The Information said people familiar with the matter linked part of the company’s revenue growth to the product.
That shift also places Perplexity in the wider race to build AI agents that can carry out multi-step work rather than simply respond to prompts. For infrastructure suppliers such as Nvidia, wider adoption of agentic systems can translate into sustained demand for inference and cloud computing, because agents may perform repeated model calls and tool interactions while completing a task.
An IPO remains part of Perplexity’s longer-term plan
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a CNBC interview in June that the company plans to go public in 2028 regardless of how the market receives potential listings by Anthropic and OpenAI. A new private funding round at more than $30 billion would therefore become an important reference point for investors assessing Perplexity ahead of any eventual public offering.
Perplexity declined to comment on The Information’s report, while Nvidia did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment. That leaves the proposed investment at the discussion stage. What is established by the reporting is the combination of a rapidly rising revenue run rate, a potential valuation exceeding $30 billion, major cloud commitments and continued interest from some of the technology industry’s most prominent investors.
