❯ Nvidia in Talks to Invest in Perplexity at $30B+ Valuation, After Weighing Tech License and Staff Poaching

DEALAccording to The Information, Nvidia is in talks to join a new equity round for AI search company Perplexity at a post-money valuation above $30 billion — up more than 50% from roughly $20 billion in the year-ago round — with the round potentially reaching several billion dollars. The report also notes a detail worth pondering: Nvidia’s original plan was not to take a stake, but to spend billions licensing Perplexity’s technology and poaching some core employees, before shifting to a direct equity stake.

REVENUESupporting that valuation is a steep revenue curve. Perplexity’s annualized revenue has climbed from under $250 million at the start of the year to more than $750 million — tripling within the year. Bezos also stands behind the company. For Nvidia, Perplexity is just one in a string of moves this month — it has also invested in three data-center power and land developers in the same stretch, while open-sourcing its proprietary models for free.

DEMANDStrung together, these moves constitute the same playbook: using capital to lock in future chip demand. That the license-plus-poaching plan was dropped shows Nvidia wants more than the technology itself — it wants Perplexity to continue as an independent, steadily purchasing major customer. The founders who need to recalculate are those in the AI application layer: when the most upstream chip supplier is also your shareholder, valuations can be negotiated very high, but how much bargaining power and independence of technical direction get diluted in tandem is something that must be thought through well in advance.

▪ SIGNALJensen Huang is using equity to lock in customers’ future orders ahead of time — far more cost-effective than selling a batch of GPUs.