“We have all the funding we’ve raised, and our revenue is only growing,” Srinivas stated. “We have no plans of IPOing before 2028.”
Earlier, a Reddit user had claimed in a post that the company was struggling financially and this had led it to implement cost-cutting measures. The post highlighted several factors that appeared to indicate Perplexity is doing “horribly financially”.
One example was Perplexity’s Auto mode, which the user claimed is “switching every follow-up question back to auto instead of the model you selected before.” The post also claimed that high-quality models such as o1 are no longer available, possibly to cut costs.
In response, Srinivas explained that Perplexity developed the 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 described as “not sustainable”.
Admission of quality issues
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Srinivas admitted that Perplexity’s focus on quick launches and new features such as Answer mode have led to quality issues, bugs, and confusion.
The CEO apologised for the recent dip in quality and for the lack of transparency, and promised to put stronger processes in place.
