In the generative AI, the dominant interface has not changed: a text box, a response. This minimalism is a strategic choice, thus giants like Openai, Anthropic, Google Deepmind or Microsoft devote most of their resources to improving the gross performance of models. The user experience remains frozen in an assumed skeuomorphism, which reassures by its familiarity and facilitates integration into existing uses. In this environment, visual or interactive innovation is not a priority: the value is still played on the power of the engine, not on the shape of the steering wheel.
It is in this space that Perplexity decided to settle with its conversational search engine which puts on a clear interface, responses enriched with sources, a neat presentation which contrasts with the frugality of its competitors. This positioning gives him an immediate identity with the general public, but he also reveals an actor who occupies a terrain left vacant more by strategy of the giants than by inability to exploit it. If Openai or Google decided tomorrow to build up the UX, the advantage of Perplexity could evaporate as quickly as it appeared.
Despite 1.5 billion dollars raised, the startup does not have a owner engine, its platform is based on third -party models like GPT of Openai or Claude d’Anthropic, which it orchestrates to provide contextualized results. This choice accelerates development and offers flexibility to change supplier, but it makes the company dependent on API costs, technical limitations, contractual changes. It also reduces the depth of its technological “moat”, since the UX it has designed can be copied and natively integrated by the actors who control the models.
To hide this dependence, Perplexity opted for an offensive communication strategy. The Apple or Meta acquisition rumors, the Tiktok’s buy -back offer, then that from Chrome to Google for $ 34.5 billion, offered the brand a maximum exposure. Not only has none of these operations led, but has economic and industrial logic behind these announcements is often difficult to discern, and their unlikely character, reinforcing the idea that the primary objective was media.
The weaknesses are real and the most plausible medium -term scenarios oscillate between an industrial backing which would give it access to a homemade infrastructure, and an acquihire where value is concentrated in the product and design team rather than in technology.
