Perplexity Launches Computer: A Unified AI Platform That Runs Entire Projects Autonomously

Perplexity AI has launched Perplexity Computer, an ambitious new platform that moves the company far beyond its roots as an AI-powered search engine. Computer is a fully autonomous, multi-agent system designed to plan, build, and manage entire projects from a single prompt.

Key Highlights

• Orchestrates 19 specialized AI models simultaneously, routing tasks to the best-suited model for each job
• Handles end-to-end project workflows: research, design, coding, deployment, and ongoing management
• Available now for Max subscribers with a usage-based credit system
• Runs autonomously in the background for hours, days, or even months

How It Works

Rather than relying on a single large language model, Perplexity Computer acts as an orchestrator. When a user sets a project goal, the system breaks it into subtasks and assigns each to a specialized model. Claude Opus 4.6 serves as the core reasoning engine for complex logic. Google's models handle image-based inputs, Veo 3.1 processes video, Grok manages lightweight tasks, and GPT-5.2 takes on long-context queries.

CEO Aravind Srinivas described the approach with a musical metaphor: "Musicians play their instruments, I play the orchestra." He added: "Computer unifies every current capability of AI into a single system. Files, tools, memory, and models, orchestrated together, working for you."

The platform connects to users' existing tools through hundreds of integrations, including GitHub, Gmail, and Slack. It features persistent memory so projects can span extended periods without losing context.

Pricing and Availability

Computer launches first for Max plan subscribers on web. Each Max subscriber receives 10,000 monthly credits, plus a one-time bonus of 20,000 additional credits valid for 30 days. The system uses usage-based pricing, replacing Perplexity's earlier experiments with advertising.

Pro and Enterprise users will gain access after load testing is completed, though no specific timeline has been announced.

Market Context

The launch comes at a pivotal moment in the AI agent race. Just this week, Cursor expanded its autonomous coding agents, and Anthropic continues to push Claude's agentic capabilities. Perplexity's entry signals that the industry is shifting decisively from chatbots that answer questions to agents that execute complex workflows.

The company has been on a growth trajectory, reaching $200 million in annual recurring revenue by late 2025 and securing a $400 million partnership with Snap to integrate its search technology into Snapchat.

What This Means

Perplexity Computer represents a significant bet that the future of AI lies not in single-model conversations but in orchestrated multi-model systems that can replace entire workflows. For developers, researchers, and businesses, this could mean dramatically shorter timelines for projects that previously required juggling multiple tools and services.

The key question remains whether autonomous AI agents can deliver on the promise of reliable, long-running project execution — or whether the gap between impressive demos and production-grade reliability will prove difficult to close.

Source: Perplexity AI