Perplexity launched a new program Tuesday aimed at supporting early-stage companies with AI-powered tools and infrastructure. Called “Perplexity for Startups,” the initiative offers eligible startups $5,000 in API credits and six months of free access to Perplexity Enterprise Pro for up to 50 team members.
This program is designed to support a variety of use cases, from vertical search, AI agents, and lead generation to customer support, sales, and legal or medical research, and tailored to help founders and their teams prototype, iterate, and build without worrying about soaring large language model (LLM) costs.
Perplexity claims that access to Enterprise Pro can help startups, as it brings together everything useful about Perplexity’s search engine, and combines it with companies’ own data and proprietary data sources. Teams can connect Perplexity to their Google Drive, SharePoint, Dropbox, and other systems, and search across the web and their files. Enterprise Pro also has integrations with FactSet and CrunchBase for users to search across.
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“Startups are building the future, and we want to support them with tools that accelerate their research and product development,” said Aravind Srinivas, the CEO and co-founder of Perplexity. “With this program, we’re making it easier for teams to prototype faster and smarter—without worrying about high LLM costs.”
To qualify for this program, the startup must be less than five years old, have raised under $20 million in equity funding, and be associated with one of Perplexity’s approved Startup Partners. It should also not be an existing Enterprise Pro subscriber.
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Startups that are not associated with one of Perplexity’s startup partners have been advised to ask their accelerator, investors, or incubator to apply to the startup program.
Just last month, Perplexity has achieved a significant milestone by surpassing $100 million in annualized revenue, just 20 months after launching its premium subscription service, Perplexity Pro. This remarkable growth reflects a staggering 6.3 times increase year-over-year despite being “under-monetized,” according to Srinivas on LinkedIn.