Snap Inc, the maker of Snapchat, has signed a major deal with AI search startup Perplexity, integrating its advanced AI answer engine directly into the Snapchat app, beginning in early 2026. The new partnership involves Perplexity paying Snap $400 million over a year in a mix of cash and equity. This investment is estimated to offer about 7% of Snap’s 2024 sales.
The integration aims to bring real-time AI answers to Snapchat’s one billion monthly active users (MAUs) through the app’s chat interface. While users will retain access to Snap’s existing My AI chatbot, the new Perplexity integrated search is designed to provide real-time answers, allowing users to explore new topics directly within the application.
For Snap Inc, the deal is a crucial move to counter the slowing growth in its advertising platform and boost user engagement, especially considering the fierce competition emerging from Meta. The company hopes that the addition of a powerful AI search utility will encourage users to spend more time within the Snapchat ecosystem.
Snap and Perplexity join hands for a new AI experience
For Perplexity AI, the integration is a massive win, instantly granting the San Francisco-based company access to a global user base. Perplexity, which was founded by Indian-origin tech leader Aravind Srinivas, has been rapidly gaining traction in the AI search space, competing directly with offerings from industry giants like Google Search and OpenAI ChatGPT.
Prior to the partnership with Snapchat, Perplexity had inked a deal with Bharti Airtel to extend the benefits of an annual subscription to Perplexity Pro for all Airtel subscribers. The Airtel deal helped the company expand rapidly in the Indian subcontinent.
What remains to be seen is how this partnership works to benefit Snapchat users – a platform that is predominantly used to share images, videos, sticker, and other AI bits. Perplexity is primarily a research-centric tool for students and scholars, and less known for its image processing prowess. The integration of the Perplexity chatbot seems like a viable option but the rest of it would require the AI startup to think out of the box.
The Snapchat-Perplexity combo will go up against Instagram and WhatsApp with Meta AI, when it releases next year.
