Perplexity doubles down on subscriptions, eyes business growth

Perplexity is moving away from ads and pushing subscriptions and business sales as its primary monetization route. Executives at a roundtable said the San Francisco AI search startup will take monetization more seriously than it has in the past and is not exploring ad deals, a contrast with OpenAI's ad strategy while Anthropic has touted the opposite.

The company is increasingly targeting large businesses and high-powered users such as finance professionals, doctors, and CEOs. It currently has five people on its enterprise sales team and plans to ramp that up, a shift that positions Perplexity more directly against startups like Glean.

Perplexity plans to prioritize revenue and revenue retention over metrics like the number of questions answered, while continuing to offer a free product with rate limits. At the roundtable it declined to share detailed financials but said revenue grew 4.7 times last year; the company generated over $150 million in annual recurring revenue by mid-last year and hit $200 million in ARR in October.

United States, San Francisco

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