NVIDIA in talks to invest in Perplexity at $30 billion-plus valuation

What's driving this quick jump in valuation is revenue growth. Perplexity's annualized revenue has tripled, going from $250 million to more than $750 million. The report attributes much of that growth to Perplexity Computer, an AI agent that automates tasks on users' behalf. Because agents work through multi-step tasks on their own, they burn through far more tokens — and that, the report notes, is likely a big part of why revenue has climbed so fast.

How NVIDIA and Perplexity got here

NVIDIA didn't set out to take an equity stake from the start. At one point, it reportedly considered an "acqui-hire" — bringing in Perplexity's technology and team wholesale. Then in March, Perplexity joined NVIDIA's Nemotron Coalition, a group known for backing open AI models as a counterweight to China's AI development push. Our own tracking has picked up several signs recently of the two companies growing closer, and this investment news fits that same trajectory.

NVIDIA isn't a company that competes directly in the chatbot race against the likes of ChatGPT or Gemini — it builds and sells the chips that power AI. OpenAI, Google, and Meta all buy NVIDIA chips to train their models. That's what makes NVIDIA's equity stakes in AI startups different from a plain financial bet: a large share of the money it puts in tends to come right back as chip purchases from that same startup.

Who else has made NVIDIA's investment list

NVIDIA has poured money into a string of AI startups over the past few months. If the Perplexity deal goes through, it would rank among the largest.

Company	Investment size / terms
Perplexity	Valuation above $30 billion (in negotiation)
Groq	$20 billion
Enfabrica	$900 million
Poolside	Size undisclosed (as of this report)

Perplexity weighs an IPO

Perplexity has raised more than $1.7 billion to date. CEO Aravind Srinivas has said he's considering taking the company public around 2028, according to a CNBC report. If NVIDIA's investment goes through, it could serve as another validation point for Perplexity's valuation as it prepares for that listing.

Editor's view

The money NVIDIA wants to put into Perplexity isn't charity. Look at the pattern the company has already established — $20 billion into Groq, $900 million into Enfabrica — and Perplexity looks like the next name on the list. All three share something in common: the recipient ends up buying more NVIDIA chips as a result of the investment. The more tokens AI agents burn through, the more GPU demand grows, and the company selling those GPUs also ends up on the investor roster. It's less the behavior of a chipmaker and more the behavior of a company growing its own market from the inside.

Put Perplexity's valuation from a year ago side by side with today's, and the shift is obvious. Back then, it was valued roughly as a search alternative. Now, the reason revenue tripled isn't search at all — it's Perplexity Computer, the agent that's been driving growth. The center of gravity has moved from a service that answers questions to one that carries out tasks, and the slope of the revenue curve has changed right along with it.

For companies watching from here, what matters more than the valuation number is how NVIDIA structures these investments. For any startup relying on cloud infrastructure, this is a reminder that a partnership with a chipmaker can turn into an equity relationship, not just a technical tie-up. Getting an early foothold in an open-model ecosystem — the way Perplexity did through the Nemotron Coalition — can also become real leverage when it's time to raise capital.

Expect more specifics on this deal — the investment size, the equity stake, whether NVIDIA gets a board seat — to surface in the coming weeks. If the deal closes, it adds one more name to NVIDIA's growing list of AI startup investments, and it could also speed up the timeline toward that 2028 IPO people are already talking about for Perplexity.