Perplexity Swipes Left on Ads, Dates CEOs Instead

KEY POINTS

•Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said the startup will prioritize subscriptions and business sales over ads.
•The company decided to serve high-profile clients like finance professionals and CEOs with a growing sales team of a few employees.
•While revenue jumped nearly fivefold to $200 million ARR last year, some Silicon Valley investors publicly doubted Perplexity's AI business model.

Perplexity, the AI startup from San Francisco led by CEO Aravind Srinivas, just ghosted ads harder than your ex after a noisy breakup. While OpenAI clings to ads like a toddler to a security blanket, Perplexity semi-boldly vowed to chase paid users—think finance pros, doctors, and CEOs, because who else can afford their mysterious subscription plans? With only 5 enterprise salespeople (soon to be more, because apparently five isn’t enough for conquering the AI world), the firm bragged revenue jumped 4.7x last year, hitting a swaggering $200 million ARR by October 2025. Meanwhile, their aborted ad experiment ended with ads chief Taz Patel mysteriously ghosting last year. VC investors at a 2025 AI confab finished the year by betting against Perplexity, perhaps betting on chaos or just confused by nonstop fundraises amid a frothy AI bubble. All while Perplexity promised free use with rate limits—because nothing says 'friendly' like a payment gate disguised as generosity.

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Mockingbird News

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Perplexity dumped ads like a bad Tinder match and doubled down on CEOs because who doesn’t love paying for mysterious AI subscriptions nobody understands?

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