Perplexity’s new Computer is another bet that users need many AI models

Starting this week, Perplexity subscribers volition person a caller agentic instrumentality astatine their disposal.

Perplexity Computer, successful the company’s words, “unifies each existent AI capableness into a azygous system.” More specifically, Perplexity says it is simply a machine idiosyncratic cause tin execute analyzable workflows independently utilizing 19 antithetic AI models, adjacent creating subagents to grip circumstantial problems.

The instrumentality is disposable now, lone connected the company’s highest subscription tier, the $200/month Perplexity Max. It runs wholly successful the cloud, which mightiness spare it immoderate of the information concerns of different agentic tools similar OpenClaw.

TechCrunch hasn’t done a hands-on demo of the caller tool, but successful example workflows connected Perplexity’s website, it is shown handling tasks that impact collecting statistics, fiscal oregon ineligible data, creating analysis, and sharing its findings arsenic finished websites oregon visualizations. 

Perplexity executives invited the property to a inheritance briefing with executives past week to sermon the merchandise and laic retired the docket for the year. The lawsuit was intended to see a objection of the tool, but the institution cancelled the demo due to the fact that of flaws recovered successful the merchandise hours earlier the event.

This instrumentality represents the improvement of Perplexity, which made a splash aboriginal successful the AI roar by wrapping frontier models successful acquainted idiosyncratic interfaces, peculiarly its search-engine-like reply service. It past moved connected to motorboat its Comet web browser past summer. Competitors similar Google person present changed their products to beryllium much similar those built astatine Perplexity, 1 enforcement said, but that’s a menace arsenic overmuch arsenic a compliment.

The institution is changing successful effect to a shifting ecosystem: One of the archetypal AI companies to connection advertising, it abandoned that concern precocious past year, saying past week that it undermined users’ spot successful their answers’ accuracy. But Perplexity’s full idiosyncratic base—in the tens of millions of users—pales successful examination to that of OpenAI, which claims 800 cardinal play users and began investigating ads successful ChatGPT this year.

Now, Perplexity executives accidental they are aiming for a much boutique acceptable of users, with products that service radical making “GDP-moving decisions.” Executives successful the briefing, who asked not to beryllium identified by name, described prioritizing endeavor subscriptions, peculiarly for heavy research.

“You don’t perceive america speech astir MAUs ever, due to the fact that we’re not really connected a ngo to get arsenic galore users arsenic possible,” 1 enforcement said.

Perplexity precocious released a caller benchmark for analyzable probe tasks, called Draco, wherever (no surprise) its ain heavy probe offering beats retired competitors similar Gemini. 

Perplexity says it is nary longer reliant connected different companies’ APIs for its web scale and present has its ain AI-optimized hunt API. But the institution is doubling down connected packaging frontier models successful a consumer-friendly idiosyncratic experience, arguing that determination is worth successful orchestrating aggregate third-party LLMs to get the astir cost-effective and close answers to queries.

“Multi-model is the future,” 1 Perplexity exec argued. Models, successful their view, are specializing, not commoditizing. The institution has recovered that its users often power betwixt models to get the results they are looking for, with December 2025 queries for ocular outputs astir often sent to Gemini Flash, bundle engineering done by Claude Sonnet 4.5, and aesculapian probe successful GPT-5.1.

A visualization of exemplary usage by Perplexity users implicit time. Image Credits:Perplexity

If 1 LLM is amended astatine coding tasks and different does a amended occupation drafting selling copy, Perplexity’s bundle tin automatically take the perfect one. Another example, executives said, is moving Perplexity’s ain modified open-source Chinese-built LLMs to reply queries much cheaply, a method the institution got dinged for hiding from its customers past year. But done transparently, the method could beryllium an businesslike mode to optimize LLM queries.

The institution besides offers users the accidental to query aggregate models astatine once, successful a diagnostic called Model Council. But the portion economics of offering aggregate queries astatine level subscription rates aren’t wholly clear. 

Still, without costly infrastructure projects connected its books and with, the executives claimed, precocious margins connected users fees, Perplexity believes it volition stay competitory by allocating tokens to the champion exemplary for a purpose.

And determination is much coming: Perplexity Comet browser is coming to iOS adjacent month, and the institution is readying a developers’ conference, Ask, connected March 11 successful San Francisco to beforehand third-party usage of its API.

One enforcement said that alternatively of looking astatine the erstwhile day’s fig of queries each morning, helium was present looking astatine the astir caller gross metrics. At slightest immoderate customers are noticing a caller absorption connected the bottommost line, with the Perplexity subreddit featuring predominant complaints of caller complaint limits connected escaped and subscription merchandise tiers.

However, the execs astatine the briefing dismisses specified complaints. “Any discussions connected the escaped tier being made worse oregon rate-limited is wholly false,” an enforcement said.