Nvidia Weighs a Perplexity Bet at Over $30 Billion

Nvidia is in talks to invest in Perplexity, the AI search company, as part of a funding round that could value the startup at more than $30 billion, according to a report from The Information that was confirmed by Reuters and Bloomberg. The talks are still in progress, and neither the investment nor the price has been settled.

If it closes at that level, the round would mark a jump of more than half over Perplexity's last raise about a year ago, when the company was worth roughly $20 billion. Behind the number sits a real business acceleration: Perplexity's annualised revenue has climbed past $750 million, up from under $250 million at the start of the year, as more people route everyday questions through an answer engine instead of a list of blue links.

The compute landlord moves up the stack

For Nvidia, a stake in a search company is less of a departure than it first looks. The chipmaker has spent the past year putting money into the customers who buy its hardware, and Perplexity would extend that pattern from the model layer toward the products people actually use. Nvidia recently agreed to pay Poolside $6 billion to license its model factory, and it has been building positions across the labs and infrastructure firms that depend on its accelerators.

Critics have a name for the concern this raises. When a supplier funds the buyers of its own product, some of the demand it books is demand it helped create. Nvidia would argue the opposite, that it is simply backing the fastest-growing parts of a market it understands better than anyone. Both readings can be true at once, and the market will not resolve the question quickly.

Timed against the earnings that matter

The talks surfaced only days before Nvidia reports quarterly results that Wall Street has turned into a referendum on the entire AI trade. We covered why that quarter carries so much weight: the company's numbers now stand in for the health of the whole buildout, and any wobble in guidance tends to ripple through every name tied to it.

A confirmed Perplexity investment would land as another signal that Nvidia sees plenty of runway. It would also deepen the ties between the company that makes the chips and the company trying to unseat Google at the front door of the internet. For now the details remain private, the figure remains a target rather than a close, and the more interesting question is how many more of these bets the market will keep rewarding.