By Arun Padmanabhan
Publication Date: 2026-04-10 07:13:00
Perplexity AI has announced the Billion Dollar Build, an eight-week competition inviting founders to use its agentic AI system, Perplexity Computer, to build a company with a path to a $1 billion valuation.
The contest opens for registration on April 14 and will run through early June, ending with a live-streamed pitch event where the top 10 finalists present their products to a panel of judges.
The prize pool is framed as “up to $2 million to build and scale,” a combination of up to $1 million in seed investment from the Perplexity Fund, split among up to three winners, and up to $1 million in Perplexity Computer credits.
What is Perplexity Billion Dollar Build?
The competition is structured in two phases: an eight-week build phase, where teams ship product and gather users, followed by a reveal phase where finalists pitch live.
Perplexity is betting on Perplexity Computer, the multi-agent AI system it launched earlier this year. The company says the tool can reason, research, write code, build products, delegate tasks and run workflows without human input at each step.
The company claims that in its first four weeks of use, the system saved over $1.6 million and did the equivalent of 3.25 years of work, based on internal estimates.
Participants must use Perplexity Computer as their “primary and most important AI” in the workflow, though they are allowed to use other AI tools alongside it. Judges will evaluate submissions on market size, quality of the…
