This AI Company Will Go Public in 2028 Regardless of Boom or Bubble

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told CNBC that his company is committed to going public in 2028 regardless of what happens to Anthropic and OpenAI in the markets between now and then. AI companies have been snowballing with IPOs lately. SpaceX prices its record $75 billion IPO this week, Anthropic has confidentially filed at nearly $1 trillion valuation, and OpenAI is drafting its own listing at an $852 billion post-money valuation. SpaceX IPO Sets a Trend for Every AI Company Srinivas was direct about the stakes. The SpaceX IPO this week will definitely be a leading indicator to how Anthropic or OpenAI will go out, he told CNBC. I think its important for the AI industry that these IPOs go well, and I actually think they will go well, because theyre doing well. The SpaceX,Anthropic,andOpenAIlistings combined will test investor appetite and scrutiny of revenue metrics at a scale the market has not seen before, with direct implications for fundraising, adoption, and investor sentiment across tech and crypto markets. Perplexity ranks lower compared with the other AI giants. Source: FatJoe Srinivas acknowledged the interconnected risk plainly. If the mega-IPOs stumble, there will be ripple effects across the entire AI sector, he said. But he remains confident that both Anthropic and OpenAI deserve their valuations because they are on the frontier of model development. His one caveat was that if either company goes six months without a meaningful advance in model capability, that is when their valuations become a problem. Where Perplexity Actually Stands Unlike its rivals, Perplexity is not burning cash to train the worlds most powerful models. Its strategy is different, and its financials reflect that. Perplexitys ARR surpassed $450 million in March 2026, a 50% acceleration in just 30 days, driven by the launch of Perplexity Computer, an autonomous agent platform that integrates multiple AI models into a unified research infrastructure. The company is targeting $656 million in ARR by the end of 2026, up from $200 million in late 2025. Srinivas is also signalling a more pragmatic view of AI spending than the mindless spending he says has defined recent months. If there is an open source model that gets the job done 90% of the time, Id probably use that if its 10 to 20 times cheaper than the frontier model, he said. That philosophy seems to be a direct shot at the cost structures that OpenAI and Anthropic depend on. Whether the AI IPO wave this year creates the conditions Perplexity needs in 2028, or whether a bubble bursts before it gets there, Srinivas says he is not changing the plan.