Perplexity launches its own take on AI agents for work

What happened

Perplexity launched Teammates. These are AI agents that can take on several roles in a workspace. They can use existing projects, skills, and memory from the Perplexity tools people already use. Teammates work with Perplexity Computer, an AI system that can run agents on your device to finish tasks. Perplexity says Teammates let people work together on large, ongoing jobs. Each Teammate can do a different job, and they can all work at the same time.

Key facts

• Teammates need Perplexity's Max plan, which costs $200 per month.
• Each Teammate gets its own thread, so you can track its progress in the Perplexity app.
• You can also talk to Teammates in Slack, a team chat app.
• Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas says he expects every company to have hundreds of Teammates working for each person.

Some background

AI agents are AI programs that do tasks for you, not just answer questions. Perplexity is known as an answer engine, a tool that gives answers to questions with sources. It is now moving into work tools. Other companies, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, already offer similar work-focused agents. Perplexity also recently added a version of Computer that can run fully offline on Mac, though it needs a lot of memory (RAM).

Why it matters

This shows that AI companies want to sell AI helpers for office work, not just chatbots. The price is high, so Teammates may be aimed at businesses and heavy users first. If many people use these helpers, the way teams split up and finish work could change.

What to watch

• Whether the price drops or cheaper plans are added.
• How well Teammates handle large, long projects in real offices.
• How Teammates compare with OpenAI and Anthropic's similar tools.
• Whether Perplexity's vision of hundreds of AI helpers per person becomes real.