Perplexity's browser year: Comet free on every platform since March, iPad and iOS upgrades, Deep Research generating decks, and enterprise controls.
2026 is Perplexity's browser year. Comet β launched July 2025 as a $200/month desktop product β dropped its paywall on March 18, 2026 and rolled out free on iOS, Android, Windows and Mac. Deep Research was upgraded to run on frontier models (Claude Opus 4.5 for Pro/Max) and now generates presentations, spreadsheets, dashboards and websites directly. Enterprise got MDM deployment with hundreds of browser policies; Voice Mode now runs on OpenAI's GPT Realtime 1.5.
ARR crossed $450 million in March 2026, up from roughly $200 million in September 2025 β more than doubling in six months. The company raised about $200 million at a valuation near $20 billion in June, bringing total funding to roughly $1.72 billion.
| Figure | Scope |
|---|---|
| ~45 million MAU | Core product, mid-2026 (up from 22M at start of 2025) |
| ~100 million MAU | "Across app and search" β a broader surface definition |
| ~3 million MAU | Comet browser specifically |
Use 45M when comparing to other assistants' core products; the 100M figure needs a defined denominator before it means anything.
Columbia Journalism Review's Tow Center audit puts Perplexity's citation-failure rate at 37% β the lowest measured, against ChatGPT Search at 67% and Grok 3 at 94%. Best in class, and still wrong on more than one citation in three.
The strategic arc in three moves:
The free pivot reframes the product: Comet is no longer a power-user tool but a user-acquisition engine β the browser as the top of Perplexity's funnel. For research workflows built on it, see our Perplexity research guide.
The 2026 upgrade moved Deep Research from "long cited answers" to artifact generation: it plans, searches, reads dozens of sources, and outputs decks, spreadsheets, dashboards or working webpages. Pro/Max tiers run it on Claude Opus 4.5, and Max subscribers can choose the model powering the browser agent itself (Opus 4.6 default, Sonnet 4.5 alternative at last check β the Claude line has since moved, so expect menu refreshes).
Independent context worth citing: Columbia's Tow Center audit found Perplexity had the lowest citation-failure rate (37%) among AI search engines β hardly perfect, but best-in-class in a category with a real accuracy problem (research-tools comparison).
Dow Jones (WSJ), The New York Times, Forbes, CondΓ© Nast, and Japan's Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun have all filed. CNN brought a federal copyright and trademark suit alleging Perplexity scraped more than 17,000 CNN stories, videos and images.
A $42.5 million revenue-share fund, plus Comet Plus at ~$5/month with 80% of that fee going to participating publishers β including Gannett, TIME, Fortune and the Los Angeles Times.
Litigation rarely kills a product outright; it shapes one. Realistic outcomes are licensing costs that pressure margins, or content availability that varies by publisher. Neither is a reason to avoid the tool β both are reasons not to make it a single point of failure.
Cited, current answers. Nothing else in the category is close for "what is true about X right now," and the 37% citation-failure rate β bad in absolute terms β is the best available.
A general assistant. Creation, memory and ecosystem still belong elsewhere; treat it as a research front-end and keep a generalist for drafting (full review).
Treat citations as leads, not verification. Click through anything you'd be embarrassed to be wrong about in public; skip the click for anything you're only using to orient yourself.
Sources: CNBC on Comet going free Β· 9to5Mac on the iOS upgrade Β· Comet (Wikipedia) Β· Releasebot Perplexity tracker Β· Beginners in AI 2026 roundup
Last updated: July 29, 2026
Anthropic's 2026 in business terms: the $65B Series H at a $965B valuation, confidential IPO filing, $47B run-rate, and enterprise adoption of Claude.
Every major ChatGPT update through July 2026: the GPT-5.5/5.6 transition, Dreaming V3 memory, Lockdown Mode, and what free vs paid gets you now.
Every major Claude update through July 2026: the Claude 5 family, Reflect dashboard, MCP upgrade, Claude Code milestones, pricing and access.
Copilot's 2026: Agent Mode general availability, agentic code review that ships fix PRs, the Copilot CLI, desktop app, and much faster indexing.
Every major Gemini update through July 2026: the 3.5/3.6 Flash generation, Gemini Omni multimodal creation, Nano Banana 2, and the agentic-era strategy.
Midjourney's 2026 in full: V8 alpha to the V8.2 default, native 2K without upscaling, 50% faster and 25% cheaper renders, and 21-second video.
Notion's 2026: autonomous Custom Agents, the credit billing switch on May 4, agents that read your files, 35β50% cheaper runs, and what it costs now.
OpenAI's 2026 from the platform side: the GPT-5.x release-and-retire cadence, the Sora shutdown, API changes, and where the company stands mid-year.
