Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shevelenko: Computer-using AI agents were impossible before late 2025
“You couldn't have built something like computer before November, December of last year, because model capabilities advance where you can have longer time horizons for running tasks, right? Where you're not just answering a question, but you're actually doing W…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perplexity content team ships production code without engineers via Perplexity Computer
“We have people on our content team that submit pull requests, basically ship You know, code that goes live into production without engineers being in the loop. And that's all being run through Perplexity Computer.”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2031
Shevelenko: Codex and proprietary AI assistants will never run rival models
“So the one thing that Codex is never going to be able to support is running Gemini models. You know, they will always be in the GPT family. Same thing for, you know, Claude, like they're not gonna, you know, have GPT models. Gemini is not gonna have Grok model…”
Disclosure
Shevelenko: AI labs aggressively petition Perplexity to use their models
“They aggressively petition us to use their models. They want, they give us early access. They want us to run evals. And so we have, you know, the exact opposite dynamic right now where they're, you know, more than happy to take revenue from us.”
Disclosure
Shevelenko: Perplexity hosts and post-trains Chinese open-source models in US data centers
“We never Integrate into perplexity any product that, or API that is hosted in China. We have ourselves post-trained. We have post-trained open source models. That, that come that are developed by Chinese labs. We run those in US data centers. We post-train the…”
Insight
Shevelenko: AI pricing will resemble Costco with memberships and compute credits
“AI is going to become a lot like Costco where you pay for the membership, right? And that gets you in the store. And that's actually the part of Costco's business that is, you know, the highest margin. And then you have, you know, everything you're buying in t…”
Disclosure
Shevelenko: Perplexity has a blossoming partnership with Apple using Mac minis
“We have a great blossoming partnership with Apple. They actually are really excited about what we're doing with personal computer and how it uses Mac minis.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shevelenko: Hardware will matter more as software faces commoditization pressure
“Apple's always been an incredible hardware company, and I think, ah, this is, you know, an era where hardware will matter even more because software is gonna face waves of commoditization pressure.”
Insight
Shevelenko: Ads alongside AI search answers undermine perceived accuracy
“When a core value prop of perplexity is accuracy it's really hard to reinforce that to users when you also have ads running alongside the answer.”
Opinion
Shevelenko sees no indication the AI data center buildout is a bubble
“From the perplexity point of view, like we don't have strong opinions on the data center build out, but there's nothing I see that indicates that that is, you know, a bubble or anything like that.”
Insight
Shevelenko: Non-AI companies gain alpha from adoption depth, not custom tools
“The alpha for a company that is not an AI company is, is not in them building their own internal tools with AI necessarily. It is in the depth of their adoption.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shevelenko: The gap between the top two AI models has never exceeded 15%
“Since this industry has kicked off, there's never been a moment where the delta between the, you know, the best model and the second best model was, like, more than maybe, like, a 10, 15% gap.”
Opinion
Shevelenko: Models may be better at exploiting cyber vulnerabilities than fixing them
“I think what is a real concern is that models will be better at exploiting cyber vulnerabilities than they are at fixing them, right?”
Opinion
Shevelenko: Chinese AI models are pushing the frontier but not at it
“They are, you know, they're pushing the frontier. They're not at the frontier, but they're pushing it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shevelenko: Perplexity has never subsidized paying Pro or Max users
“So we at Perplexity, we've never subsidized paying users. So if you're on a, you know, pro or max plan you know, we're, thank you, you're contributing to our success.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shevelenko: Perplexity 5x'd ARR to $500M With Only 34% Headcount Growth
“As we've increased our ARR by five X, you know, from a hundred million to five hundred million, we only grew a head count 34%.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shevelenko: Perplexity Computer users consume more credits each week, driving revenue
“The longer people have had access to computer. I mean, this stuff is still brand new, but they're using it consuming more computer credits every week. Than the previous week, right? So we're actually just in, in the extreme upward part of the ramp. That's a bi…”
Disclosure
Shevelenko: Perplexity launching 36 workflows on top of Perplexity Computer
“So we actually are launching this week, 36 different workflows that go on top of computer.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shevelenko predicts powerful reasoning models will run locally on Mac Minis
“Well, I certainly think that as models get more powerful, you will certainly be, and as, you know, local CPUs get more powerful as well, you're going to be able to distill powerful reasoning models to a size where they can run on a Mac mini.”
