Perplexity’s planned stock market debut comes at a pivotal moment for the artificial intelligence industry, as investors weigh whether the sector’s soaring valuations can be justified by sustained technological breakthroughs and commercial adoption. With Anthropic and OpenAI also moving toward public listings and SpaceX expected to test demand for mega-cap technology offerings, the next two years could determine whether Wall Street’s enthusiasm for AI matures into a durable investment cycle or faces the kind of reckoning that has followed previous technology booms. For companies such as Perplexity, which have built businesses on rapid advances in foundation models developed by others, the challenge will be proving not only that AI can continue to improve at a breakneck pace, but also that customers are willing to pay enough for those capabilities to support the industry’s unprecedented valuations.
Perplexity plans to go public in 2028 regardless of how investors respond to the upcoming stock market debuts of rival artificial intelligence firms Anthropic and OpenAI, Chief Executive Aravind Srinivas told CNBC.
“Agnostic of these two companies, we were planning for something in 2028 so that still remains the case,” Srinivas said in an interview aired on Tuesday.
Srinivas has previously said the AI-powered search startup did not intend to pursue an initial public offering before 2028. His latest remarks provide a firmer indication of the company’s timetable.
The comments come after Anthropic, the developer of the Claude AI model, confidentially filed for an IPO last week. Anthropic was most recently valued at nearly $1 trillion. OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, also confidentially filed for an IPO on Monday.
The planned listings, along with the anticipated IPO of SpaceX, are expected to rank among the largest public offerings in history and are being closely watched as a test of investor appetite for high-valued AI companies.
“I certainly think there will be ripple effects if they don’t go well, like there is no sugar coating on that. The SpaceX IPO this week will definitely be a leading indicator to how Anthropic or OpenAI will go out,” Srinivas said.
“I think it’s important for the AI industry that these IPOs go well, and I actually think they will go well, because they’re doing well.”
Investors have increasingly scrutinized the valuations of Anthropic and OpenAI, two so-called frontier AI laboratories whose models are considered among the most advanced in the industry.
Srinivas said both companies merit their lofty valuations because “they are on the frontier,” but warned that a slowdown in technological progress could pressure investor sentiment.
“If for six months you don’t see a model capability advance from one of these two companies, then it’s a problem for them,” he said.
The rapid growth of enterprise AI spending has also come under greater examination. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said companies are paying closer attention to the costs associated with deploying AI systems, describing expenses as a “huge issue.”
Srinivas pointed to a trend known as “tokenmaxxing,” in which employees increase their use of AI tools to demonstrate productivity.
“But people don’t want to just tokenmax, they really want to use whatever model is the best for that particular task,” he said.
Perplexity’s platform relies on AI models from multiple providers and can select different models depending on the task and cost considerations.
“If there is an open source model that gets the job done 90% of the time, I’d probably use that if it’s 10 to 20 times cheaper than the frontier model,” Srinivas said. “The future is still awesome for frontier intelligence, but it’s not going to be mindless spending, as we saw in the last few months.”
Perplexity, founded in 2022, has emerged as one of the fastest-growing AI startups, competing with larger rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the race to commercialize generative AI. Its planned IPO would come as public markets face a wave of large technology listings that could help determine whether investor enthusiasm for AI remains strong enough to support trillion-dollar valuations.
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