By John Ondercin
Publication Date: 2026-02-18 11:56:00
In a move that has sent ripples through Silicon Valley, Perplexity AI has effectively sided with Anthropic in an increasingly bitter philosophical and commercial battle against OpenAI. The alignment marks a definitive split in the AI industry: a high-stakes bet on whether the future of intelligence belongs to ad-supported mass markets or premium, trust-based subscriptions.
The declaration came during a series of roundtable meetings this week, where Perplexity executives, including CEO Aravind Srinivas, made it clear that the company is rejecting the advertising model that OpenAI is currently testing.
The core of the dispute lies in how these companies plan to pay for the astronomical costs of running frontier AI models.
Perplexity Opts for Anthropic’s Trust-Based Subscriptions Over OpenAI’s Ad-Based Model
Facing immense infrastructure costs, OpenAI recently began . CEO Sam Altman has described ads as a necessary path to maintaining a massive free tier of 1.5 billion monthly users. Meanwhile, Perplexity has taken the opposite path. This week, the company doubled down on its commitment to remain an ad-free “answer engine.” Executives argue that allowing sponsors to influence AI-generated answers would fundamentally undermine user trust.
By rejecting ads, Perplexity is aligning itself with Anthropic’s “helpful, harmless, and honest” ethos. Anthropic recently capitalized on this sentiment with a viral Super Bowl ad featuring the tagline:…
