Nvidia is negotiating an investment in Perplexity at a valuation exceeding $30 billion, according to a report from The Information. The valuation marks a leap of more than 50% year-over-year, following an earlier window where Nvidia reportedly weighed a straight acqui-hire for the search startup's engineering talent and core IP.
Perplexity's top line provides the operational justification: annualized revenue has tripled from $250 million to over $750 million. The catalyst behind this surge is "Perplexity Computer," an agentic framework designed for multi-step task execution that dramatically accelerates inference token consumption. Perplexity has banked over $1.7 billion to date, with CEO Aravind Srinivas eyeing an IPO around 2028, according to CNBC.
For Nvidia, the deal fits a calculated circular strategy. Beyond reinforcing the March partnership under the Nemotron Coalition—an open-weight alliance counterbalancing Chinese model development—the check converts corporate venture capital into guaranteed silicon demand. Much like recent allocations to Poolside, Groq (at $20 billion), and Enfabrica ($900 million), capital deployed by Jensen Huang's balance sheet reliably routes straight back into GPU orders.
The real operational test is whether Perplexity's soaring ARR represents durable enterprise workflow lock-in or merely a venture-subsidized compute bonanza in the run-up to a 2028 listing.