Nvidia is reportedly in discussions to invest in Perplexity as part of a new equity round that could value the AI search startup above $30 billion — a sharp jump from its roughly $20 billion valuation just a year earlier, according to The Information.
The talks come as Perplexity pushes beyond conversational search into AI agents designed to handle more complex, multi-step professional tasks. The company’s annualized revenue has reportedly climbed from less than $250 million at the start of 2026 to more than $750 million in the months since.
The potential deal underscores how Nvidia is deploying its enormous balance sheet to build influence across nearly every layer of the AI economy — not just among companies that buy its GPUs, but increasingly among the model developers, cloud providers, and consumer-facing AI applications built on top of that hardware. For Perplexity, Nvidia’s involvement could bring not just capital but strategic credibility and closer proximity to the broader computing ecosystem underpinning many advanced AI services. It would also deepen an already complex set of relationships in which Nvidia can simultaneously act as supplier, investor, and technology partner to companies building on its chips — a dynamic that is becoming increasingly common as the AI industry consolidates around a handful of infrastructure providers.
