By The420 Web Correspondent
Publication Date: 2026-09-25 18:36:00
Perplexity AI has been sued by startup DaVoice in a California federal court over allegations that it misappropriated trade secrets related to wake word technology used in AI assistants.
DaVoice filed the complaint on September 24 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The heavily redacted lawsuit alleges that Perplexity gained access to confidential technology during a collaboration between the two companies and later used that information without authorisation.
The allegations have not been proven in court, and neither company had publicly responded to Reuters’ request for comment at the time of reporting.
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DaVoice says collaboration exposed proprietary technology
DaVoice specialises in technology that allows devices to continuously listen for specific “wake words” and activate an AI assistant when those words are detected.
The company alleges that its collaboration with Perplexity involved technology built using DaVoice’s proprietary source code, inference logic, network architecture, training approaches and training data.
According to the lawsuit, that access gave Perplexity knowledge of confidential technical methods that DaVoice considers trade secrets.
The complaint is heavily redacted, so the exact technical details of what DaVoice says was copied or used improperly are not yet public.
What wake word technology actually does
A wake word…
