Perplexity processed 780 million queries in May 2025, CEO Aravind Srinivas confirmed at Bloomberg’s Tech Summit. The AI search engine is growing at over 20% month-over-month.

According to Srinivas, Perplexity now handles 30 million search queries every day. That daily number is a massive increase from where the platform started. “The first day in 2022, we did 3,000 queries, just one single day.” If this growth continues, Perplexity could be looking at 1 billion queries per week by the end of the year, Srinivas explained.

This growth comes as the company now reports 22 million active users. Still, in terms of overall traffic share in the AI search space, Perplexity lags behind, holding just 1.5%. The AI search space remains dominated by OpenAI, which commands 80% of the traffic. However, Perplexity’s recent numbers show that there is room for new AI search engines to emerge as users test alternatives to ChatGPT and Google, which still dominate search.

Perplexity is expanding its capabilities as it sees growth shows real traction

With its growing rate, Perplexity is creating more expansion opportunities. The platform is currently developing Comet, a browser. But Srinivas isn’t pitching Comet as just another Chrome alternative. Instead, he describes it as a “cognitive operating system” that rethinks how search happens within the browser experience.

“If people are in the browser, it’s infinite retention,” he said. “Everything in the search bar, everything on the new tab page, everything you’re doing on the sidecar, any of the pages you’re in, these are all going to be extra queries per active user.”

Comet browser could become Perplexity’s ad business engine. The company said it plans to monetize the browser experience by tracking user activity across web surfaces, potentially allowing for premium ad placements similar to Google’s model.

The AI search engine is also getting into agentic commerce. It recently announced a new partnership with PayPal that allows U.S. users to shop directly inside its chat interface. This follows the platform’s earlier integrations with brands like Whole Foods and TurboTax, which advertised through its AI-powered shopping assistant.

Perplexity is reportedly in talks with Samsung to integrate its app and AI assistant into Samsung devices. The deal, which could also involve a financial investment from Samsung, may offer Perplexity wider distribution across mobile and hardware ecosystems.

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