Perplexity Signs $750m Cloud Agreement with Microsoft

AI-powered search engine Perplexity has signed a three year $750 million cloud computing agreement with Microsoft, reports Bloomberg. This is the first cloud agreement Perplexity has signed outside of Amazon Web Services (AWS), of which it has a long-term partnership.

“We are excited to partner with Microsoft for access to frontier models from X, OpenAI, and Anthropic,” a Perplexity spokesperson told Bloomberg. “AWS remains Perplexity’s preferred cloud infrastructure provider, and we’re excited to announce expansions of that partnership in the coming weeks."

The deal with Microsoft is notable, given that co-founder Arvind Srinivas said in 2023 that the company was "all-in" on AWS, however, it since had a legal battle with Amazon related to Perplexity's AI browser agent Comet making purchases for users online, which Amazon alleged was "computer fraud" as it was not clear whether the shopping is on behalf of an actual human being.