# Perplexity reports positive gross margins on every revenue stream

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/perplexity-reports-positive-gross-margins-on-every-revenue/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/builders/aravind-srinivas/) · CEO, Perplexity · Held research roles at OpenAI and Google DeepMind before co-founding the AI search engine Perplexity in 2022.
- Host: [Chamath Palihapitiya](https://realalpha.app/people/chamath-palihapitiya/) · Founder & CEO, Social Capital · Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.
- Host: [Jason Calacanis](https://realalpha.app/people/jason-calacanis/) · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH · Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.
- Host: [David Sacks](https://realalpha.app/people/david-sacks/) · Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures · PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26.
- Host: [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) · CEO, Ohalo · Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.
- Show: All-In
- Episode: [Four CEOs on the Future of AI: CoreWeave, Perplexity, Mistral, and IREN](https://realalpha.app/v/-JBhTBu9ZbA/), Mar 23, 2026
- Moment: 43:49 to 46:45 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/perplexity-reports-positive-gross-margins-on-every-revenue/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/-JBhTBu9ZbA/?t=2629

## Quote

> “every revenue perplexity makes has **positive gross margins**”
> — [Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/builders/aravind-srinivas/) at [45:49](https://realalpha.app/v/-JBhTBu9ZbA/?t=2749) · All-In

## Takeaways

1. Enterprise Pro is $40 per person monthly; Max is $400.
2. Perplexity says every revenue stream has positive gross margins.
3. The company remains unprofitable overall.

## About this segment

Aravind Srinivas says model routing and subscriptions let Perplexity keep positive gross margins across revenue. Enterprise plans cost $40 or $400 monthly, though the company is not yet profitable overall.

From “Four CEOs on the Future of AI: CoreWeave, Perplexity, Mistral, and IREN”, Mar 23, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/-JBhTBu9ZbA/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[44:00](https://realalpha.app/v/-JBhTBu9ZbA/?t=2640) Starting to see corporations with computer starting engaging. In fact, you'll be happy to know this. Last week, I took two people in my back office and I said, stop working on OpenClaw. Your job is to do the back office automation at our venture firm only using perplexity. And they were like, perplexity computer. And they were like, oh, okay. It doesn't talk well in Slack. It doesn't have an agent in Slack. I was like, it will. I'm going to see.

[44:30](https://realalpha.app/v/-JBhTBu9ZbA/?t=2670) arm and i'll talk to him about that so we need a really strong slack connector it's already out it is okay great computer exists as a slack bot right now okay that you can add to your slack workspace on enterprise plan and our entire company works like that people are talking more to computer on slack than other people in our first volley we were sending reports in but it wasn't interactive that's perfect so now you've got your company going in two different directions this incredible consumer run you have how many people are using the product every month several tens of millions so tens of millions of people that's very much similar to the trajectory of the google and yahoo consumer business now you've got corporate how are you doing on the corporate side thousands of companies the fastest growing business for us ah it's growing faster

[45:16](https://realalpha.app/v/-JBhTBu9ZbA/?t=2716) than the consumer and revenue and things like computer unlock entirely new possibilities for example, we've saved more than $100 million for our Enterprise Max customers who are on the highest tier of Enterprise. Explain what that is. What does it cost? $200 a month per person? So there are two tiers. One is the Enterprise Pro, which is $40 a month. And there's the Enterprise Max, which is $400 a month. And on a computer, after you run out of your credits, you would pay for the tokens. You pay for the usage. Are you making money on the $400 a month, five thousand dollar a year one or at this point in time are people going so crazy our uh one thing that perplexity has is every revenue we make unlike certain other rapper companies every revenue perplexity makes has positive gross margins got it because uh we're not just selling

[46:05](https://realalpha.app/v/-JBhTBu9ZbA/?t=2765) tokens right most of our revenue is recurring because people are paying a subscription fee and because we route through multiple different models we are very efficient in terms of how we spend on the tokens because we have all this advantage with drag and orchestration and search we don't actually need to blow up the context window of the models yeah as a result of that we have positive gross margins on all the revenue every single penny we make we make profits on that overall the company is still yet to be profitable but we're working towards that you've had the