Nvidia is in talks to plow fresh money into Perplexity AI as part of a new funding round that would value the AI search startup at more than $30 billion, according to reporting citing The Information that surfaced Sunday and Monday. If it closes, the round would mark better than a 50% jump from the roughly $20 billion valuation Perplexity fetched in its last raise, finalized less than a year ago in September 2025.

The talks land at a moment when Perplexity's numbers are moving fast. Annualized revenue has climbed past $750 million, up from under $250 million at the start of 2026 and from roughly $450 million as recently as March — meaning the company has added $300 million in run-rate revenue in a matter of months, according to a breakdown of the figures. Much of the acceleration is credited to Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based AI agent pitched at professionals looking to automate routine computer tasks, alongside continued growth in the company's core AI-powered search and answer engine.

A Rich Multiple, a Familiar Backer

At $30 billion against $750 million in annualized revenue, investors in the new round would be paying roughly 40 times current sales — a steep multiple even by the frothy standards of this year's AI financings, though one Perplexity's growth rate may help justify. Nvidia is already an investor in the company, alongside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, SoftBank Group, and venture firms IVP and New Enterprise Associates; Perplexity has raised more than $1.5 billion to date. The startup also struck a $750 million cloud-computing agreement with Microsoft's Azure unit, per Bloomberg reporting cited in the same coverage.

Neither Nvidia nor Perplexity had confirmed the talks or commented publicly as of Monday. A deal would extend Nvidia's pattern of taking equity stakes in AI companies that also buy its chips and cloud capacity — a strategy that has drawn scrutiny from some investors and analysts wary of circular financing arrangements propping up AI valuations across the sector.

Perplexity has been adamant that it isn't rushing toward an exit. Chief executive Aravind Srinivas told CNBC in June that the company still plans to go public in 2028, regardless of how initial public offerings from rivals Anthropic and OpenAI — both of which have filed confidentially with the SEC in recent months — end up performing.

"Agnostic of these two companies, we were planning for something in 2028, so that still remains the case," Srinivas said, adding: "I certainly think there will be ripple effects if they don't go well, like there is no sugar coating on that."

Perplexity's chief business officer, Dmitry Shevelenko, has framed the 2028 target as deliberate: holding off on a listing, he has said, has given the company room to build a more durable, high-growth business rather than rushing to market. That framing took on added weight after financial-runway concerns surfaced around the company in 2025, which leadership moved to tamp down at the time.

For now, the Nvidia talks remain unconfirmed and could still fall apart before a term sheet is signed. But if the round closes near the reported terms, it would be one of the largest single markers yet of how aggressively chipmakers, cloud providers and mega-investors are racing to lock in stakes in the handful of AI startups seen as most likely to reshape how people search for and act on information online.