Perplexity launches $1M build contest

Perplexity is trying to turn its new artificial intelligence agent into a startup factory, not just a chatbot. On April 9, 2026, the company announced an eight-week contest called Billion Dollar Build with up to $1 million in funding and platform credits for finalists. (x.com) The tool at the center of this is Perplexity Computer, which Perplexity describes as a “general-purpose digital worker” that can operate software interfaces, execute workflows, and keep running for hours or months after you give it a goal. That is a different pitch from a search box that just returns answers. (perplexity.ai, perplexity.ai) Perplexity introduced Computer publicly in March 2026 and said it could research, design, code, deploy, and manage projects from a single conversation. Its product pages say the system can orchestrate roughly 19 to 20 frontier models in parallel and move across tools the way a human operator would. (perplexity.ai, perplexity.ai, perplexity.ai) That helps explain why the contest is framed around building businesses instead of demos. If Perplexity can get teams to ship working products on top of Computer in eight weeks, it gets a public test of whether its agent can do real enterprise work under deadline. (x.com, perplexity.ai) The prize structure also tells you who this is for. Finalists get a mix of funding and platform credits, which is useful for small teams that need both cash and computing time more than a trophy or conference badge. (x.com) Perplexity has the balance sheet to run that kind of program. Company funding trackers show it has raised large rounds through 2025, including a $500 million Series E round in May 2025 and additional financing later that year, putting total disclosed funding well above $1 billion. (tracxn.com, perplexity.ai) This also fits a broader shift in Perplexity’s strategy. In March 2026, the company pushed Computer into the enterprise market with features like Slack integration and Snowflake connectors, moving from consumer search toward software that can sit inside a company’s daily operations. (venturebeat.com, perplexity.ai) A contest like this gives Perplexity something enterprise buyers care about more than promises: examples. If even a few teams build useful recruiting tools, research workflows, internal dashboards, or lead-generation systems, Perplexity gets case studies showing Computer can produce software people will pay for. (perplexity.ai, perplexity.ai) It also puts Perplexity in the same lane as cloud companies that used credits to attract startups early. The difference is that Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure mostly rented computing power, while Perplexity is trying to subsidize the worker that uses the software for you. (perplexity.ai, venturebeat.com) If the finalists ship real products by early summer 2026, Perplexity gets proof that Computer is more than a flashy demo. If they do not, the company will have spent up to $1 million showing how hard it still is to turn autonomous artificial intelligence agents into dependable businesses. (x.com, perplexity.ai)