Perplexity CEO denies having financial issues, says no IPO before 2028

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas recently took to Reddit to address users’ product complaints and reassure them that the company is not under serious financial pressure.

Srinivas seemed to be responding, in part, to a user theory that the company is “doing horribly financially” and “making lots of changes to cut costs.” As an example, the theorizer pointed to Perplexity’s Auto mode, where the AI search engine automatically selects the model with which to answer a user’s prompt.

On the contrary, Srinivas said Perplexity created Auto mode because “all AI products right now are shipping non-stop and adding a ton of buttons and dropdown menus and clutter,” which he said is “not sustainable.”

“The user shouldn’t have to learn so much to use a product,” he said.

As for whether Perplexity is facing pressure to cut costs or IPO, Srinivas said, “We have all the funding we’ve raised, and our revenue is only growing.” In fact, he said the company has “no plans of IPOing before 2028.”