Nvidia in talks to back Perplexity at $30B+

Nvidia is in talks to take a direct equity stake in Perplexity as part of a new funding round that would value the AI search company above $30 billion, according to The Information. That would mark a jump of more than 50 percent from the roughly $20 billion valuation Perplexity finalized less than a year ago, in September 2025. Nvidia has held a stake in Perplexity since 2023, and had earlier considered a technology-licensing arrangement or hiring some of Perplexity’s staff before settling on a straight equity investment instead.

The deal talks come as Perplexity’s business has scaled sharply: annualized revenue has climbed past $750 million, up from under $250 million at the start of the year, with growth partly driven by Perplexity Computer, its cloud-based AI agent for automating computer tasks. CEO Aravind Srinivas has previously discussed targeting a 2028 IPO.

Why Nvidia keeps writing these checks

Nvidia’s strategy of taking equity in companies that consume large volumes of its chips, rather than just selling them hardware, has become a recurring pattern this year, echoed in Nvidia’s separate talks to acquire Hugging Face outright and its earlier joint launch of the Portable Computer local AI agent with Perplexity. Locking in a stake at this stage gives Nvidia a claim on Perplexity’s upside heading into a potential IPO, while giving Perplexity a strategic backer with obvious motivation to keep its infrastructure running on Nvidia silicon rather than shopping around.