Perplexity Launches AI 'Computer' Platform
AI startup Perplexity has launched "Computer," a new platform designed to autonomously create and execute entire digital workflows. The system aims to go beyond chatbots by orchestrating multiple AI models to handle complex business processes from end to end without human intervention.
The "Computer" platform is a significant evolution from Perplexity's origins as a conversational search engine. Founded in August 2022, the company initially focused on providing direct, cited answers from web sources, positioning itself as a more transparent alternative to traditional search engines. This new platform moves beyond answering questions to autonomously executing multi-step digital tasks from a single user prompt. At its core, Perplexity Computer uses a technique called multi-model orchestration, which treats individual AI models as specialists. The system decomposes a user's goal into subtasks and routes each one to the most appropriate model from a pool of 19, including Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 for reasoning, Google's Gemini for deep research, and Nano Banana for image generation. This approach avoids the limitation of relying on a single AI to perform all functions. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas, who has a background as a research scientist at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. Srinivas earned his PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley after receiving a dual degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Perplexity has attracted significant financial backing from prominent investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Databricks. After multiple funding rounds, the company's valuation has surged, reportedly reaching $14 billion by June 2025 following a $500 million funding round. Access to the Perplexity Computer platform is currently exclusive to subscribers of its highest-tier "Max" plan, which costs $200 per month. The service operates on a credit-based system for the computational tasks it performs, with subscribers receiving a monthly allotment of credits. The launch positions Perplexity in the growing field of "agentic AI," where competitors include offerings from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Some analysts suggest that by creating a user-facing layer that orchestrates various backend models, Perplexity could relegate the major AI model creators to a commoditized role, similar to "plumbing."
