Perplexity seeks news allies as it challenges Google
Srinivas took part in an on-stage interview at a Wall Street Journal tech conference in California just days after the news outlet and the New York Post filed a lawsuit arguing that Perplexity is guilty of massive copyright infringement and trademark violations.
"We certainly were very surprised about the lawsuit, because we actually wanted a conversation," Srinivas said.
"I'm here to make it very clear that I would love to have a commercial contract."
Srinivas criticized Google's model of directing traffic to websites, raking in money along the way from ads or sponsored results.
He laid out a vision of Perplexity artificial intelligence insightfully answering online queries, then sharing ad revenue with sources cited by the search engine in process.
"We're going to do advertising on Perplexity," Srinivas said.
"Whenever we make advertising revenue, we're going to share that revenue with the content publishers in a manner inspired by Spotify."
Perplexity.ai is a question-answering platform known for its minimalist and conversational interface.
Unlike ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity's tool provides up-to-date answers that often include links to source materials, allowing users to verify information.
And unlike a classic search engine, Perplexity provides ready-made answers on its webpage, making it unnecessary for users to click through to the source website.
Srinivas said he aims for money-losing Perplexity to become profitable in three to five years.
"I would rather figure out a model where we can grow together, where our financial success rewards you than try to just solve my problem by licensing content and moving on," Srinivas told the Journal interviewer.
A lawsuit filed Monday accuses Perplexity of "massive freeriding" on protected content that allowed the company to divert readers and revenue from the Wall Street Journal and New York Post.
"I'm hopeful that we can figure something out here," Srinivas said.
Similar allegations have been made by The New York Times, which has sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity.
Launched at the end of 2022, Perplexity handled about 350 million queries in September as use accelerated from the 500 million queries at the search engine during all of last year, according to its chief and co-founder.
At that rate, Perplexity could be handling a half-billion search queries daily by 2026, he reasoned.
"A product like ours can only succeed if there is a flourishing ecosystem of good journalism," Srinivas said.
"I don't think just licensing content is the solution."
Perplexity is backed by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and AI juggernaut Nvidia.