Perplexity, the artificial intelligence (AI) startup, is planning to pursue an initial public offering (IPO) in 2028, regardless of how investors respond to the upcoming stock market debuts of rival AI firms, according to comments by chief executive Aravind Srinivas in an interview with CNBC.
Srinivas said the company’s public listing plans remain unchanged despite growing attention on the expected market entries of leading AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI.
“Agnostic of these two companies, we were planning for something in 2028 so that still remains the case,” Srinivas told CNBC in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.
The comments come as investors closely watch a series of high-profile listings in the technology sector. Anthropic, the developer of the Claude AI model, recently confidentially filed for an initial public offering, while OpenAI has also submitted confidential IPO paperwork. SpaceX is also anticipated to go public this month.
Srinivas acknowledged that the performance of these listings could influence sentiment across the AI industry, although he expressed confidence in their prospects.
“I certainly think there will be ripple effects if they don’t go well,” he said, adding that SpaceX’s IPO could act as an early indicator of how investors respond to future listings from Anthropic and OpenAI.
He argued that both companies merit their substantial valuations because of their position at the forefront of AI development. However, he suggested that maintaining those valuations would depend on continued advances in model capabilities.
According to Srinivas, users increasingly want access to the most effective AI model for a specific task rather than relying exclusively on the most advanced or expensive systems.
“If there is an open source model that gets the job done 90% of the time, I’d probably use that if it’s 10 to 20 times cheaper than the frontier model,” Srinivas told CNBC.