Perplexity Plans 2028 IPO Despite AI IPO Uncertainty

Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s chief executive, said the company will seek an initial public offering in 2028 and will not alter that timetable based on the market performance of other large AI firms. He warned that the results of major listings could influence investor demand and capital access across the sector.

Recent and proposed large listings include SpaceX’s roughly $75 billion IPO, Anthropic’s confidential filing near a $1 trillion valuation and OpenAI’s planned listing at an estimated $852 billion post-money valuation. Srinivas noted those offerings will test investor scrutiny of revenue and growth metrics at a scale the market has not seen before.

Perplexity has taken a different path from rivals that are spending heavily to train the largest models. The company focuses on packaging combinations of models into products and managing operating costs rather than investing most of its capital in frontier model training.

Perplexity’s annual recurring revenue exceeded $450 million in March 2026, a change the company described as a 50% acceleration over a 30-day period after launching Perplexity Computer, an autonomous agent platform that integrates multiple models into a single research infrastructure. The firm is targeting $656 million in ARR by the end of 2026, up from about $200 million in late 2025.

The CEO offered a cost-focused view on model choice. He added: “If there is an open source model that gets the job done 90% of the time, I’d probably use that if it’s 10 to 20 times cheaper than the frontier model.” That approach emphasizes lower compute and licensing costs compared with building or running the largest proprietary models.

Perplexity intends to grow revenue through product launches and recurring contracts while keeping model-development spending modest relative to some competitors. Investors and company leadership will watch how Perplexity’s financial results and the wider IPO market interact, as those outcomes could affect valuations and access to public capital for AI firms.