Artificial ielligence startup Perplexity is moving away from an ad-based revenue model and focusing on paid subscriptions. The managers of this company announced that Perplexity has gradually stopped showing advertisemes since the end of last year and is not signing any new advertising coracts. Perplexity’s decision comes amid a broader AI industry debate about sustainable monetization.
In 2024, Perplexity was one of the first productive AI companies to test advertising on its platform. Now, citing Business Insider and Financial Times media, the managers of this startup have announced that the advertising experience has caused serious concern for users’ trust. They explained that the advertising model can create the impression that the chatbot is responding to users with the goal of making more sales.
Perplexity focuses on selling paid subscriptions
A Perplexity executive told the Financial Times: “The challenge with advertising is that the user gradually doubts everything, so we don’t see it as productive to focus on that right now.” He emphasized that instead of advertising, the company focuses on making a product that users are willing to pay for. The main focus is on corporate customers and professional users such as financial professionals, lawyers, doctors and senior managers.
Another manager at Perplexity did not completely rule out the possibility of returning to advertisemes in the future, but said that displaying advertisemes is not in line with users’ demands and may not be necessary for the company’s growth.
Perplexity’s decision acceuated the AI industry’s growing divide over revenue models. A group of companies, such as Perplexity and Eropic, are couing on selling paid subscriptions. Eropic has also promised that the Claude chatbot will remain ad-free.
Another group, including big players like OpenAI, has moved io advertising. OpenAI has just started testing ad serving for free ChatGPT users. These companies see advertising as a way to finance the very high costs of developing and running artificial ielligence models. The cost of infrastructure, processing power and research in this field has increased rapidly and has increased the pressure to find a sustainable source of income.
The dispute over advertising did not remain only at the technical and commercial level and was extended to the public arena as well. Ahropic ran an ad during the 2025 Super Bowl that indirectly targeted ad exposure on ChatGPT. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the ads as “inaccurate and false.”
