At the moment, many AI startups are beneath strain to safe dependable cloud capability as demand for highly effective fashions continues to rise. That race has pushed firms to signal massive, long-term infrastructure offers to verify they’ll scale with out disruption.
Not too long ago, Perplexity has signed a $750 million cloud settlement with Microsoft, in line with sources. The settlement runs for 3 years and can see Perplexity use Microsoft’s Azure cloud providers. Underneath the deal, the NVIDIA-backed startup will have the ability to run a variety of AI fashions via Microsoft’s Foundry platform, together with fashions from OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI.
Multi-cloud technique stays intact
A Perplexity spokesperson advised Bloomberg that the corporate is partnering with Microsoft to achieve entry to “frontier fashions from X, OpenAI and Anthropic.” The spokesperson additionally mentioned the deal doesn’t exchange Perplexity’s current cloud setup.
Amazon Net Companies stays Perplexity’s major cloud supplier, and the corporate has not shifted spending away from AWS as a part of the Microsoft settlement.
The deal highlights how fast-growing AI firms are more and more adopting multi-cloud methods fairly than counting on a single supplier. By spreading workloads throughout platforms, startups can enhance reliability and achieve entry to a wider vary of AI fashions.
For Microsoft, the settlement provides one other high-profile AI buyer to Azure because it positions Foundry as a central hub for deploying fashions from a number of suppliers, not simply OpenAI.
Background authorized dispute
The cloud partnership additionally comes as Perplexity continues to face authorized strain from Amazon. Final yr, Amazon sued Perplexity over its automated procuring characteristic, alleging the startup improperly accessed buyer accounts and masked automated exercise as human shopping.
