Perplexity is a private company. As of October 2026, it has not gone public and has not published a full shareholder list. Outsiders can only piece together official funding announcements and media reports: we know who invested, but not who owns what percentage. For the company overview, start with What kind of company is Perplexity.
NVIDIA, SoftBank, and other public companies appear below. This page is for information only and is not investment advice.
The 30-Second Answer
Perplexity is owned by its founding team, employees, and several rounds of outside investors. The full cap table is not public.
The two early rounds have official announcements with clear investor lists. The later rounds, where the valuation climbed fast, are mostly media reports; the company did not publish the details.
Officially Confirmed Early Investors
2023 Series A: Perplexity said it raised $25.6 million, led by Peter Sonsini of NEA. Seed investors Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, and Bob Muglia invested again, and Susan Wojcicki, Paul Buchheit, Databricks Ventures, and others joined.
2024 Series B: Perplexity said it raised $73.6 million, led by IVP. NEA, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, and Databricks invested again. New investors included NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), Tobi Lutke, Bessemer Venture Partners, Naval Ravikant, and others.
These two rounds show who got in early. They do not show who owns the most today.
Later Funding Rounds: Mostly Media Reports
| Date | Amount / Valuation | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-03 | $25.6 million Series A | Official | Led by NEA |
| 2024-01 | $73.6 million Series B | Official | Led by IVP; NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos, and others joined |
| 2024-12 | $500 million at a $9 billion valuation | Media report | TechCrunch citing Bloomberg |
| 2025-07 | $100 million at an $18 billion valuation | Media report | Bloomberg |
| 2025-09 | $200 million at about a $20 billion valuation | Media report | TechCrunch citing The Information; the last completed round as of October 2026 |
| 2026-08 | Valuation above $30 billion | Media report | According to The Information (via Reuters), NVIDIA is in talks to join; no close announced as of October 2026, amount not disclosed |
The same Reuters report names NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos, and SoftBank as well-known Perplexity backers. Citing The Information, it says Perplexity’s annualized revenue passed $750 million in August 2026, up from under $250 million at the start of the year. That figure is projected from the recent pace of income; it is not audited annual revenue.
On going public: in a June 2026 interview, CEO Aravind Srinivas said the company plans to go public in 2028 (CNBC).
Partners: Models, Cloud, and Distribution
Perplexity is an answer engine and agent entry point, not a company that relies only on its own models. Users can pick outside models from OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and others (GPT-6.1 Sol and Claude Opus 5.5 were added in October 2026). It also has its own Sonar models and the local model PPLX 27B. For more on this, see Perplexity’s middleman dilemma.
| Partner | Relationship | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | Main cloud provider | 2026-01 | Company spokesperson, according to Bloomberg (via Reuters) |
| Microsoft Azure | Three-year $750 million cloud deal | 2026-01 | According to Bloomberg (via Reuters) |
| Crusoe | Multi-year partnership: model training and inference on NVIDIA GB300 clusters; amount not disclosed | 2026-09 | Crusoe official |
| Samsung | Perplexity preinstalled on Galaxy S26; Bixby uses the Perplexity API | 2026-02 | Official |
| HP | Perplexity Windows app preinstalled, starting with the ZBook Ultra G3a | 2026-09 | Official |
| American Express | Perplexity Computer Skills for US Amex business card members | 2026-10 | Official |
Backing and Dependence
The investor list is impressive: venture firms, an AI-chip giant, and famous angels. For a startup fighting Google and OpenAI for the search entry point, that means money and connections.
The dependence is just as clear. The core experience runs on other companies’ models and rented compute. If model prices rise, suppliers change terms, or big platforms build answers straight into search and browsers, Perplexity’s bargaining power shrinks.
Penchan’s summary
Perplexity’s ownership is easy to describe with too much certainty. What we can confirm is who invested, not who owns how much. That is true of most private AI startups.
Rather than asking who the biggest shareholder is, the better question is whether Perplexity can turn its investors, model suppliers, and paying users into a business others can’t take away.
Further reading: What kind of company is Perplexity, Perplexity valuation and revenue, Perplexity’s middleman dilemma.