Perplexity AI is getting in on the smartphone game.
The startup on Thursday announced a partnership to bring its artificial intelligence search engine technology directly into Motorola smartphones. As part of the integration, Perplexity’s AI capabilities will be included in Motorola’s suite of “Moto AI” features.
That makes the Razr-maker the first smartphone brand to integrate Perplexity directly into a device. Motorola is also partnering with Microsoft Copilot, Google’s Gemini and Meta for certain queries.
“‘Search shouldn’t be about endless links and ads — it should give the user directly what they want, and we think the best way to do that is through an answer engine,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said onstage Wednesday at an event in New York. “Your phone is now an answer machine, personal assistant and a research agent.”
Perplexity’s integration with Motorola follows OpenAI’s high-profile Apple partnership, introduced in December. When Apple users ask Siri complex questions, it triggers the ChatGPT integration, where Siri asks for the user’s permission to access ChatGPT to answer the query.
The Perplexity-Motorola integration is a distribution partnership, meaning it’s about Perplexity gaining users rather than revenue, Srinivas told CNBC in an interview.
“We’re not making money off their sales or anything like that,” he said. “We’re looking for usage, and they’re looking for introducing amazing new, cool features, so it’s like a win-win for both of us.”
Motorola users will all receive three months free of Perplexity Pro, including the company’s Deep Research feature. That will give Perplexity insight into how people that aren’t part of its typical audience use the technology — whether it’s for simple alarms and reminders or more complex tasks, Srinivas said.
Perplexity and Motorola’s partnership comes after a year of AI-specific devices, such as Humane’s AI Pin and the Rabbit r1, have either failed or launched to underwhelming reviews.
Investors are eyeing smartphone-AI partnerships as a way for the technology to make it into the hands of consumers on the go every day. And some AI startups are reportedly doing the same thing — namely, Sam Altman’s partnership with Apple designer Jony Ive to reportedly make AI devices including a “screenless phone.”
“Fifteen years ago, smartphones changed everything,” Nicole Hagen, Motorola’s head of product marketing, said onstage Wednesday. “Now, we are standing at the edge of a major shift, once again, in technology.”
Perplexity is prioritizing a smartphone integration because it’s “the biggest touch point or access point for a consumer company to be part of,” Srinivas said.
He added that making the tool native to a smartphone, rather than an app you have to consciously choose to use, makes it easier to get users into the habit of turning to AI for day-to-day tasks. It’s also a good way to break into the weekend user market, Srinivas said.
“Nobody uses AI on the weekends,” he said. “You can only achieve dialog of ubiquitous usage if you’re deeply ingrained in smartphones on a day-to-day basis.”
Perplexity’s AI search engine competes against the likes of Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI. The company started 2024 with a roughly $500 million valuation and ended it with a valuation of about $9 billion, after attracting increasing investor interest amid the generative AI boom — as well as controversy over plagiarism accusations.
Perplexity had just under $100 million in annual recurring revenue, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC in March.
AI-assisted search has been viewed by investors as one of Google’s key risks, as it potentially changes the way consumers access information online. Last year, OpenAI, which started the generative AI craze in late 2022 with ChatGPT, introduced a search engine called SearchGPT. Google last year also launched “AI Overviews” in search, allowing users to see a quick summary of answers at the top of results.
Perplexity is still in talks to raise between $500 million and $1 billion in funding at an $18 billion post-money valuation, sources familiar with the situation have told CNBC.
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