Perplexity’s Shift to AI Agents Boosts Revenue 50%  | PYMNTS.com

The company’s revenues have jumped 50% in the last month, with estimated annual recurring revenue (ARR) topping $450 million in March, the Financial Times (FT) reported Wednesday (April 8), citing figures seen by the news outlet.

As the report notes, the move marks a pivot from the chatbot-style search engine once viewed as a credible challenge to Google to AI agents that perform tasks on user’s behalf.

Perplexity has more than 100 million monthly active users from its search and agent tools, the FT said, citing company executives. This includes tens of thousands of enterprise clients, with the company making money via consumer and enterprise subscriptions, which can cost anywhere from $20 to $200 a month.

The FT points out that Perplexity’s growth is still dwarfed by that of other top AI startups. For example, coding company Cursor has seen its ARR reach $2 billion, up from less than $100 million in 2024. Anthropic reported an ARR of $19 billion at the end of February, while OpenAI said it generated $20 billion last year.

Writing about the rise of agentic AI last month, PYMNTS noted research showing that many consumers now use AI tools to assist with everyday duties like…