Perplexity’s new Laptop is one other guess that customers want many AI fashions

Beginning this week, Perplexity subscribers can have a brand new agentic instrument at their disposal.

Perplexity Laptop, within the firm’s phrases, “unifies each present AI functionality right into a single system.” Extra particularly, Perplexity says it’s a pc consumer agent that may execute advanced workflows independently utilizing 19 completely different AI fashions, even creating subagents to deal with particular issues.

The instrument is out there now, solely on the corporate’s highest subscription tier, the $200/month Perplexity Max. It runs fully within the cloud, which could spare it a number of the safety considerations of different agentic instruments like OpenClaw.

TechCrunch hasn’t finished a hands-on demo of the brand new instrument, however in example workflows on Perplexity’s web site, it’s proven dealing with duties that contain amassing statistics, monetary, or authorized information; creating evaluation; and sharing its findings as completed web sites or visualizations. 

Perplexity invited the press to a background briefing with executives final week to debate the product and lay out the agenda for the yr. The occasion was supposed to incorporate an indication of the instrument, however the firm canceled the demo due to flaws discovered within the product hours earlier than the occasion.

This instrument represents the evolution of Perplexity, which made a splash early within the AI increase by wrapping frontier fashions in acquainted consumer interfaces, notably its search-engine-like reply service. It then moved on to launch its Comet internet browser final summer season. Rivals like Google have now modified their merchandise to be extra like these constructed at Perplexity, one govt mentioned, however that’s a menace as a lot as a praise.

The corporate is altering in response to a shifting ecosystem: One of many first AI firms to supply promoting, it deserted that enterprise late final yr, saying final week that it undermined customers’ belief of their solutions’ accuracy. However Perplexity’s whole consumer base — within the tens of tens of millions of customers — pales compared to that of OpenAI, which claims 800 million weekly customers and commenced testing adverts in ChatGPT this yr.

Now, Perplexity executives say they’re aiming for a extra boutique set of customers, with merchandise that serve individuals making “GDP-moving selections.” Executives within the briefing, who requested to not be recognized by identify, described prioritizing enterprise subscriptions, notably for deep analysis.

“You don’t hear us discuss MAUs ever, as a result of we’re not really on a mission to get as many customers as potential,” one govt mentioned.

Perplexity lately launched a brand new benchmark for advanced analysis duties, known as Draco, the place (no shock) its personal deep analysis providing beats out opponents like Gemini. 

Perplexity says it’s now not reliant on different firms’ APIs for its internet index and now has its personal AI-optimized search API. However the firm is doubling down on packaging frontier fashions in a consumer-friendly consumer expertise, arguing that there’s worth in orchestrating a number of third-party LLMs to acquire probably the most cost-effective and correct solutions to queries.

“Multi-model is the long run,” one Perplexity exec argued. Fashions, of their view, are specializing, not commoditizing. The corporate has discovered that its customers continuously change between fashions to acquire the outcomes they’re in search of, with December 2025 queries for visible outputs most frequently despatched to Gemini Flash, software program engineering finished in Claude Sonnet 4.5, and medical analysis in GPT-5.1.

If one LLM is best at coding duties and one other does a greater job drafting advertising copy, Perplexity’s software program can robotically select the perfect one. One other instance, executives mentioned, is operating Perplexity’s personal modified open supply Chinese language-built LLMs to reply queries extra cheaply, a way the corporate bought dinged for hiding from its prospects final yr. However finished transparently, the approach may show an environment friendly technique to optimize LLM queries.

The corporate additionally presents customers the chance to question a number of fashions directly, in a characteristic known as Mannequin Council. However the unit economics of providing a number of queries at flat subscription charges aren’t fully clear. 

Nonetheless, with out costly infrastructure initiatives on its books and with, the executives claimed, excessive margins on consumer charges, Perplexity believes it would stay aggressive by allocating tokens to the perfect mannequin for a function.

And there may be extra on the horizon: Perplexity Comet browser is coming to iOS subsequent month, and the corporate is planning a builders convention, Ask, on March 11 in San Francisco to advertise third-party use of its API.

One govt mentioned that as a substitute of yesterday’s variety of queries every morning, he was now the newest income metrics. A minimum of some prospects are noticing a brand new give attention to the underside line, with the Perplexity subreddit that includes frequent complaints of recent fee limits on free and subscription product tiers.

Nonetheless, the execs on the briefing dismiss such complaints: “Any discussions on the free tier being made worse or rate-limited is totally false,” one mentioned.