Words at a loss: Perplexity makes AI browser free despite massive compute costs

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas announced Wednesday that the company’s Comet web browser will soon be free for all users, despite the significant compute costs associated with its autonomous AI capabilities. The move positions Perplexity, an AI-powered search company, to challenge established players while highlighting the complex economics facing AI companies as they scale their most resource-intensive features.

Why this matters: The decision to offer compute-heavy AI browsing for free illustrates how startups can exploit advantages that tech giants like Google cannot easily replicate due to their massive user bases and existing infrastructure constraints.

Key details: The browser’s autonomous, agentic features are expanding beyond desktop to include a mobile app with voice interaction capabilities.

• Srinivas acknowledged that rolling out similar features to Google’s billions of users would require more computing power than may exist globally to handle the inference demand.
• The mobile version will function as a “background assistant” that users can interact with while driving or multitasking.
• Even established AI leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic frequently operate “right on the edge of maxing out their ability to serve their customers.”

Strategic positioning: Keeping the browser free serves multiple business objectives beyond user acquisition.

• “We want to build a better internet, and that needs to be accessible to everybody,” Srinivas told Business Insider.
• The approach aims to combat AI-generated “slop” flooding the internet by providing higher-quality, accessible alternatives.

Competitive landscape: Google’s AI ambitions face unique constraints that create opportunities for nimbler competitors.

• The search giant’s existing business scale complicates rolling out resource-intensive AI features to its user base.
• Voice-enabled AI assistants from other providers often have reduced capabilities—Google’s Gemini Live cannot even access current web information.
• This infrastructure bottleneck opens lanes for startups to break through with features that would be economically challenging for larger platforms to deploy at scale.