By Brody Ford and Matt Day
Publication Date: 2026-01-29 22:32:00
(Bloomberg) — AI startup Perplexity signed a $750 million deal with Microsoft Corp. to use its Azure cloud service, spreading its business beyond longtime cloud partner Amazon.com Inc.
The three-year commitment will let Perplexity deploy AI models through Microsoft’s Foundry service, including those made by OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, according to people familiar with the deal, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter.
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“We are excited to partner with Microsoft for access to frontier models from X, OpenAI and Anthropic,” a Perplexity spokesperson said.
Perplexity hasn’t shifted spending from Amazon Web Services, long the startup’s main cloud provider, as part of the Microsoft deal, the spokesperson added.
“AWS remains Perplexity’s preferred cloud infrastructure provider, and we’re excited to announce expansions of that partnership in the coming weeks,” he said.
Microsoft and Amazon declined to comment.
Perplexity is one of the more richly valued AI startups but faces stiff competition from Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI in its ambition to rethink how people search for information online. It also hasn’t raised nearly as much capital as OpenAI and Anthropic, which have recently engaged in a wave of infrastructure deals.
Big companies typically rent cloud services from multiple partners, both to get access to unique services and to limit their reliance on any single vendor. That…
