Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest in Perplexity at a valuation above $30 billion

[Laura94]

Nvidia is negotiating an investment in Perplexity as part of a new funding round that could value the AI search and agent startup at more than 30 billion dollars, according to reporting from The Information later confirmed by Reuters. That figure would represent an increase of more than 50 percent compared to the roughly 20 billion dollar valuation Perplexity landed in a funding round finalized about a year ago, and the investors involved in the new round beyond Nvidia haven't been publicly disclosed yet.

The number driving investor interest just as much as the valuation jump itself is Perplexity's underlying revenue growth. The company's annualized revenue has climbed above 750 million dollars, up from less than 250 million dollars at the start of this year, roughly tripling its run rate in under eight months. Much of that growth has reportedly been driven by Perplexity Computer, a cloud based AI agent product designed to automate computer based tasks for professional users, rather than the core search product that originally built the company's reputation as a challenger to Google.

This wouldn't be Nvidia's first involvement with Perplexity. The chipmaker has held an investment in the company since 2023, and the relationship deepened further in July when Perplexity committed to running its AI agent workloads on Nvidia's new Vera CPUs after finding they significantly outperformed traditional server processors for some of its core tasks. Interestingly, The Information also reported that Nvidia had at one point considered a licensing arrangement or even hiring some of Perplexity's team outright rather than taking a straightforward equity stake, before the conversation shifted back toward the current equity focused talks.

The deal fits an increasingly familiar pattern for Nvidia, which has spent the past two years building the hardware behind most major AI systems while simultaneously writing checks to many of the same companies that buy and depend on that hardware. Perplexity already counts Jeff Bezos, SoftBank, IVP, and New Enterprise Associates among its other backers, and a completed deal at this valuation would mark one of Nvidia's boldest individual AI bets yet, deepening a relationship between the two companies that reaches back further than most people watching this specific story probably realize

Nvidia in talks to invest in Perplexity at $30 billion valuation as revenue tops $750 million - Tech Startupstechstartups.com