In an interview, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas says that the startup is planning to go public in 2028, regardless of how well Anthropic's and OpenAI's IPOs go
Perplexity is planning to go public in 2028 regardless of how the market receives the listings of Anthropic and OpenAI, CEO Aravind Srinivas told CNBC.
Context & Ripple Effects
Related coverage has charted a tightening IPO timeline for the largest AI companies: OpenAI has been reported to be preparing for a 2026 listing, while Anthropic has confidentially filed and has also been discussed as a potential near-term public-market candidate.
Perplexity’s stated 2028 target places it behind that first wave but rejects the idea that its own timetable should be dictated by the initial reception for Anthropic and OpenAI. It is an attempt to establish an independent capital-markets path amid a broader AI-company transition toward public ownership.
First-order effects
- Perplexity is publicly setting a multi-year liquidity and financing horizon for employees, investors, and prospective public-market partners, rather than positioning a listing as contingent on its larger rivals’ outcomes.
- Anthropic and OpenAI remain the nearer tests of investor appetite for major AI-company offerings; Perplexity is signaling it does not plan to wait for a favorable verdict from those tests before pursuing its own listing.
Second-order effects
- A stated independent timetable can increase pressure on AI startups to articulate their own route to durable public-company readiness, instead of treating the first marquee IPOs as a single gatekeeper for the sector.
- If the leading listings establish public-market comparables, later issuers such as Perplexity will face a clearer—though not necessarily easier—benchmark for how investors assess AI businesses.
Third-order effects
- The sequence points toward AI financing becoming a multi-company public-market cycle rather than a one-off event centered on OpenAI or Anthropic, with later entrants able to plan around an emerging set of comparables.
- Whether that broadens access to public capital or concentrates it among a few large platforms will depend on how the first offerings reshape investor expectations; Perplexity’s stance suggests companies are preparing for that market to exist regardless.
The trend: AI companies are moving from private, venture-backed expansion toward staggered public-market financing, with early mega-listings likely to set reference points rather than determine every later IPO.