Survey of AI Founders Predicts Perplexity is the AI Giant Most Likely to Fail – Decrypt

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Survey of AI Founders Predicts Perplexity is the AI Giant Most Likely to Fail – Decrypt

By Decrypt / Jose Antonio Lanz
Publication Date: 2025-11-17 22:57:00

In brief

  • 300+ AI insiders at Cerebral Valley Summit voted the search startup is the AI company that is most likely to fail
  • Anthropic leads in investor preference with skepticism over OpenAI also noticeable among investors.
  • AGI predictions pushed to 2030 signal cooling enthusiasm

More than 300 AI founders and investors at San Francisco’s Cerebral Valley Summit voted Perplexity as the billion-dollar startup most likely to fail, with OpenAI coming in second place.

An anonymous survey conducted by independent journalist Alex Heath at a major industry gathering last week pointed to a marked shift in Silicon Valley sentiment.

When asked which private tech companies they’d invest in, attendees picked Anthropic over OpenAI, despite the consensus that OpenAI would lead next year’s LMArena leaderboard—a ranking of the world’s most powerful AI models.

Perplexity’s Jesse Dwyer dismissed the survey results, calling the event a “judgmental valley conference.”

The company’s valuation reportedly jumped from $14 billion to nearly $50 billion in a short span, amid a frenzy that was ringing alarm bells among analysts, prompting comparisons to the dot-com era.

Legal troubles and reports of sketchy behavior have compounded the skepticism.

Amazon sued Perplexity in November to stop its Comet browser from making purchases on behalf of users. Reddit filed its own lawsuit in October, alleging the company scraped billions of posts. Japanese newspapers Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, and Nikkei all

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