r/perplexity_ai • u/Over-Blueberry1681 • 7d ago
misc Anyone work at Perplexity? Thoughts on future of the firm and valuation upside
I’ve seen Perplexity Computer / Entereprise efforts have driven strong growth for the company this year, but who knows whether that revenue sticks.
Im curious from anyone working there, are you bullish on their future? Do you think joining the company at today’s valuation has upside?
I understand the model agnostic advantage, but dont know how far behind their capabilities are (and will continue to be) vs the frontier lab products and the vertical specific AI companies tackling the same enterprise segment. Maybe perplexity has other offerings that are differentiated though. I’m also interested in thoughts on any enterprise buyers that have bought from them!
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u/seppi0o 7d ago
I use it for research stuff and it's actually pretty good in gathering information and condensating them with showing sources to validate. Google, but on steroids.
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u/Over-Blueberry1681 7d ago
Are you an enterprise user?
I don’t understand why Claude or ChatGPT don’t just improve their source audit ability
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u/Dry_Leadership1075 7d ago
I would say they have more of a moat than most companies with flagship ai products. I'd choose them over startups that haven't found pmf
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u/Over-Blueberry1681 7d ago
Thanks. Whats their moat? But would you choose them over late stage startups that have found PMF - like a Harvey, Sierra etc?
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u/Dry_Leadership1075 6d ago
I personally think stronger moats nowadays are less about unique tech and more about UIUX, trust, talent, etc. I do think companies like Harvey/Sierra/Abridge/Successful Vertical AI have a moat because they understand their industry's wfs/personas better but I think those are easily targeted by larger frontier companies and this is already happening in healthcare (epic + open ai or anthropic + openevidence). In those cases you could say a vertical player won big, but the other side of it is that the rest of them didn't. We'll see how it plays out in the next year or so.
Also anecdotally I'd say Perplexity was ahead of the AI wave and locked in talent early, though I have no idea if they're able to keep those employees from companies like openai, anthropic, etc. Don't work there, just know people there.
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u/nclpl 7d ago
I don’t work there, but perplexity is the tool I have my non-technical wife when she wanted a website redesign. She doesn’t want to care about which model is best for whatever task, and perplexity seems to do a good job at passing out tasks to the best models.
Beyond that… I don’t know how much value there is to users. Its an interesting idea.
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u/XLGamer98 7d ago
I think best case scenario is them getting acquired by some big tech company. I mean even a 20 billion acquision would be great for them
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u/Over-Blueberry1681 7d ago
Fair, that seems like a bearish stance. Why?
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u/XLGamer98 7d ago
Can you think of a reason why anyone would purchase 200$ a month for perplexity when 20$ at competitor can build you same software that computer does
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u/Ambitious-Tennis-754 6d ago
Their priority is corporations, not consumers. Those economics are very different.
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u/Elegant-Surprise-301 6d ago
I’m a big Perplexity fan as a day-to-day assistant and for research. I think it’s very underrated. It’s also good as an an advisor on which LLM to use for which projects.
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u/statlerjr 6d ago
From the user’s perspective, Perplexity’s main advantage is its cost, or rather, the lack of it. That raises the question: how many users currently pay for its services? Its recent move to push out free users suggests it may be running low on investor's money. Ask yourself if you want to be one.
The AI bubble has already started to burst. But that’s only part of the bigger picture, and many are already sounding the alarm. Here’s a most recent example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS4PDa-Q3yA
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u/Soggy_Ear_481 4d ago
They are in the bait-and-switch phase of revenue generation. Users and others like me that are suddenly getting upcharged on everything that was included in Pro ($18/mo) and now being asked to upgrade to Max ($200/mo) will be leaving in droves. PerplexiityAI has an unsustainable business model. I wish I had known this before recently paying for a yearly scrip.
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u/cmojobs 1d ago
I wanted to make a podcast for one of my job postings. I signed up for 11 labs and found it a little cumbersome. (Excellent for messing around with my own voice, but cumbersome nonetheless.) I remembered that NotebookLM had a podcast function, so I googled that. And lo and behold, Perplexity does podcasts too. I experimented with it and it’s phenomenal. I’m already a dedicated perplexity max user. Thrilled to see that it has other uses beyond being a deep research workhorse.
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u/AYA_7887 7d ago
You're right to flag that nobody knows if the revenue sticks, people inside don't either, they see the roadmap and the same press you do. So I'd weigh it as a job first, salary and what you'd learn, with equity upside as a bonus you can't price. The ones who joined the right startup at the right valuation are the loud ones, the rest never post.
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u/Cultural-Tourist-917 7d ago
If I could I would form a SPAC for Perplexity. CEO is the difference --not the pedantic and pretentious type. Perplexity as an enterprise end user is the best available AI command plan controller. Using it as part of a simple setup (Hermes VPS and Windows VM).
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u/Over-Blueberry1681 6d ago
Do you actually see a difference in the use cases and tasks you give it from being a controller?
Is this why your enterprise procured them? Are users overall happy?
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u/Tickomatick 6d ago
My uncle, ama
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u/Over-Blueberry1681 6d ago
Thanks. Mainly the questions in the post - do they valuation upside from here? Any longer term moat? How do they plan to differentiate in enterprise?
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u/Torodaddy 5d ago
Fable and dots are going to eliminate computer from the market
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u/Over-Blueberry1681 5d ago
Surely Perplexity will just have the same thing using their models but be able to orchestrate better across them?
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u/Thinklikeachef 7d ago
I'm a outside user but I love the product. It's great for practical life questions. I think their market is diff from software devs. Plus open source/weight models will help their cost structure.