Perplexity Surpasses 780 Million Queries in May, Targets Billion-Query Week

Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine, has experienced phenomenal growth, processing 780 million queries in May alone. CEO Aravind Srinivas revealed this milestone at Bloomberg’s Tech Summit on Thursday, noting a month-over-month growth rate exceeding 20%. According to Srinivas, at the current rate, Perplexity is on track to handle a billion queries per week within the next year.

Srinivas highlighted the company’s remarkable journey, stating, “Give it a year, we’ll be doing, like, a billion queries a week if we can sustain this growth rate. And that’s pretty impressive because the first day in 2022, we did 3,000 queries, just one single day. So from there to doing 30 million queries a day now, it’s been phenomenal growth.”

A key factor in Perplexity’s future growth strategy is the development of its new web browser, Comet. Srinivas believes Comet will significantly boost user engagement and query volume.

“If people are in the browser, it’s infinite retention,” he explained. “Everything in the search bar, everything on the new tab page, everything you’re doing on the sidecar, any of the pages you’re in, these are all going to be extra queries per active user, as well as seeking new users who just are tired of legacy browsers, like Chrome. I think that’s going to be the way to grow over the coming year.”

The motivation behind Comet, as Srinivas articulated, is to transform AI’s role from merely providing answers to actively performing tasks on behalf of users. He explained that while an AI-powered answer might consolidate four or five searches, AI performing an action could encompass an entire browsing session within a single prompt.

“You really need to actually have a browser and hybridize the compute on the client and the server side in the most seamless way possible,” Srinivas stated. “And that calls for rethinking the whole browser.”

Srinivas emphasized that Perplexity envisions Comet not just as another browser, but as a “cognitive operating system,” constantly available to assist users in both work and life.

While details about Comet remain limited, Srinivas previously indicated that one objective behind developing the browser is to track user activity beyond the Perplexity app, facilitating the sale of premium, personalized ads, a strategy reminiscent of Google’s early growth. He also said that it will launch in the coming weeks.