Perplexity is abandoning plans to place advertisements in its AI search product because the business appears to be like for sustainable enterprise fashions that received’t damage consumer belief. The adjustments are half of a bigger strategic shift for the corporate, which has lengthy targeted on disrupting Google Search’s enterprise.
“Google is altering to be like Perplexity greater than Perplexity is making an attempt to tackle Google,” stated a Perplexity government at a press briefing on Tuesday. Executives spoke to the press on the situation of anonymity.
As a substitute of chasing mass adoption, Perplexity will lean into its subscription enterprise, with a give attention to turning into essentially the most correct AI service for builders, enterprises, and customers prepared to pay a month-to-month price. The corporate additionally plans to make partnerships with device-makers a much bigger a part of its enterprise transferring ahead.
The transfer marks a serious change for the corporate, which was one of many first AI companies to start out experimenting with advertisements in 2024. CEO Aravind Srinivas stated on a podcast that 12 months that he predicted advertisements would ultimately be the corporate’s core monetization engine. “I believe with promoting we might be actually actually worthwhile,” he added.
Now, executives say they’re altering course as a result of advertisements may make individuals mistrustful of Perplexity’s responses. Anthropic provided the same explanation for not placing advertisements in its chatbot, Claude, and poked enjoyable at ChatGPT’s advertisements in a Tremendous Bowl industrial earlier this month.
However there could also be different causes Perplexity is just not pursuing promoting.
Early buyers in Perplexity as soon as believed the startup may attain lots of of hundreds of thousands and even billions of customers, however the startup’s progress hasn’t met expectations, in accordance with a supply near the corporate. When the startup raised its Sequence B funding in 2024, board member and investor Cack Wilhelm stated in a blog post that Perplexity was “able to bringing the ability of AI to billions.” Two years later, that aim nonetheless appears a good distance off.
Information from the third-party analytics agency Similarweb suggests Perplexity had simply over 60 million month-to-month energetic customers throughout its web site and cell app in January. That’s greater than double the customers Perplexity had final 12 months, in accordance with Similarweb. Individuals additionally now entry Perplexity through its AI-powered browser, Comet, which Similarweb doesn’t monitor.
A supply near the Perplexity says the agent in its Comet browser reached 2.8 million weekly energetic customers (which had been additionally Perplexity subscribers) in December 2025, down from a peak of seven.8 million WAUs earlier within the 12 months.
With out accounting for Comet, Perplexity’s consumer base on net and cell is lower than 10 p.c of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, which have 800 million weekly energetic customers and 750 million month-to-month energetic customers, respectively.
“One of many issues that’s beginning to turn into clear to us is that Perplexity isn’t for everybody,” one other Perplexity government advised the press.
Promoting has been a powerful enterprise for corporations like Google and Meta as a result of they’ve lots of of hundreds of thousands of free customers. With out that scale, advertisements possible turn into a much less interesting enterprise mannequin.
Perplexity says it’s making lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in income, primarily from shopper subscriptions, nevertheless it more and more expects progress to come back from enterprise gross sales.
The AI search startup additionally appears to be making a extra concerted wager on powering different AI providers in 2026, with plans to carry its first developer convention later this 12 months. The corporate’s pitch is that Perplexity could be an orchestration layer on prime of AI fashions from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, directing consumer queries to the most effective mannequin for a given query.
Perplexity stated it has no plans to eliminate its free tier presently, regardless of its pullback from advertisements. A technique the corporate hopes to maintain providing merchandise to free customers is thru partnerships, just like the one it has with Motorola, the place Perplexity comes preinstalled on shopper units. Executives hinted that extra device-maker partnerships might be on the horizon.
