Perplexity just partnered with PayPal to bring agentic shopping directly into search queries. Rolling out this summer to U.S. Pro subscribers, users can research products, book travel, or buy tickets and pay instantly via PayPal or Venmo without leaving the chat interface.
Perplexity just rolled out Perplexity Assistant on iOS, turning its search engine into an action-taking mobile agent. The app can now draft emails, reschedule meetings, book rides, make reservations, play media, and set reminders right on your iPhone.
Perplexity's Sonar-Reasoning-Pro just tied Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro for first place on LM Arena's new Search Arena leaderboard. Perplexity models locked down the top ranks by outperforming OpenAI's search models and citing two to three times more sources, winning 53% of direct head-to-head battles against Gemini.
Sentient Foundation just released Open Deep Search (ODS), an open-source framework designed to challenge closed AI search tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT Search. ODS pairs custom reasoning agents with web search, plugging into models like DeepSeek-R1 or GPT-4o. Paired with DeepSeek-R1, it even beat GPT-4o Search Preview on complex benchmark queries.
Perplexity just open-sourced pplx-kernels, a high-performance communication library for Mixture-of-Experts models that runs up to 10x faster than standard All-to-All primitives. It bypasses the CPU via GPU-to-NIC communication and overlaps data transfers with computation across NVLink, CX-7, and EFA networks. Why it matters: running massive MoE architectures across clusters just got substantially faster without sacrificing portability.
Perplexity just launched dedicated answer tabs, letting users seamlessly filter searches across images, video, travel, and shopping in one place. It basically turns the AI search engine into a full-fledged vertical search hub. The feature is available now on the web, with mobile coming soon.
Perplexity just proposed an ambitious bid to acquire TikTok, promising to rebuild its recommendation system from scratch in US data centers and make the code open-source. The plan also includes adding AI search and video citations. Why it matters: With TikTok valued at up to $50B, the pitch faces massive financial hurdles and may simply be another wild PR stunt.
Perplexity just rolled out major upgrades to its Sonar models, adding High, Medium, and Low search modes so developers can balance search depth with compute costs. The company is also waiving fees for citation tokens across responses. Internal benchmarks show Sonar outperforming search-enabled GPT-4o at a fraction of the price.
Perplexity just launched an official desktop app for PC, adding voice dictation and keyboard shortcuts to access its latest models directly from the desktop. It basically turns the AI search engine into a native desktop tool.
Perplexity just rolled out a new voice mode to its macOS desktop app. Mac users can now trigger hands-free search anytime by hitting ⌘ + ⇧ + M. The update is live right now on the Mac App Store.
T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom just announced an "AI Phone" built with Perplexity, putting Perplexity Assistant directly on the lock screen to eliminate app-hopping. Slated for later this year under $1,000, the device also integrates tools from ElevenLabs and Google Cloud AI. It marks Perplexity's push to evolve from an answer engine into an action machine.
Perplexity just announced it’s building Comet, a new web browser designed from the ground up for "agentic search." Instead of just summarizing links, it aims to let AI navigate and execute complex tasks across the web on your behalf. Waitlist signups are open, though Perplexity hasn’t announced an official launch date yet.
Perplexity just open-sourced R1 1776, a post-trained variant of DeepSeek-R1 designed to remove political censorship without sacrificing performance. Trained with Nvidia NeMo on a curated 40,000-prompt dataset, it delivers factual answers across sensitive topics while keeping original math and reasoning strengths intact.
Perplexity just launched Deep Research, an autonomous agent that browses hundreds of web sources and synthesizes in-depth reports in two to four minutes. It scored a chart-topping 21.1% on Humanity's Last Exam, and unlike rivals, it is free for all users with daily query caps.
Perplexity just rolled out a new version of its in-house Sonar model, powered by Cerebras chips to generate answers at a blazing 1,200 tokens per second. Built on Llama 3.3 70B, it beats GPT-4o mini and Claude 3.5 Sonnet in user satisfaction testing while answering almost instantly. It is now live for Pro subscribers.
Perplexity just rolled out file and image uploads for free account holders, complete with a massive 1 million token context window. That means anyone can now dump an entire 400-page book or 1,000 pages of PDF financial reports into the search tool at once, easily trouncing ChatGPT's paid 128k context cap.
Perplexity just rolled out Perplexity Assistant for Android users, turning its search engine into an action-taking agent. It can hail rides, reserve tables, and read your screen or camera feed across apps in 15 languages. While completely free to use right now, CEO Aravind Srinivas admitted some complex multi-app actions might still be hit-or-miss.
Perplexity just rolled out its Sonar API, letting developers bake real-time web search with citations straight into their apps. The service comes in two tiers—standard Sonar and 200k-token Sonar Pro—with base pricing starting at $5 per 1,000 searches. Why it matters: Perplexity is productizing its core consumer moat into an API, taking direct aim at Google and OpenAI.
Perplexity AI just submitted an official bid to ByteDance to merge its AI search engine with TikTok's U.S. operations and new capital partners. The proposed deal would let ByteDance's existing investors keep their stakes while funneling short-form video into Perplexity's engine. Sources value the potential deal well north of $50 billion.
Perplexity just acquired Read.cv, a LinkedIn alternative known for clean portfolio designs. The Read.cv team will join Perplexity's design and engineering group, while its existing platform winds down with user data exports open until May 16. It marks Perplexity's third acquisition to date.
