Perplexity AI, a San Francisco–based startup founded in 2022, has introduced Comet Plus, a new subscription revenue model for publishers.

Comet, the company’s AI-powered browser introduced in July 2025, is currently in an invite-only rollout. Users can join a waitlist to request access, but can subscribe to Perplexity Pro for immediate access. The new Comet Plus subscription, priced at $5 per month, builds on that model by creating a $42.5 million revenue share pool to compensate publishers directly for their content.

Under the program, publishers receive 80% of subscription revenue, while Perplexity retains 20%. Payments are divided into three categories:

• Direct traffic to publisher sites from the Comet browser

• Citations when publisher content appears in AI-generated answers

• Agent-driven use, when Comet’s assistant relies on publisher content to complete tasks

Participating publishers include Blavity, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Gannett, The Independent, and Time. Jessica Chan, Perplexity’s head of publisher partnerships, told Digiday that checks are already going out to publishers and that the model could deliver “millions” to partners. “Perplexity only succeeds if journalism succeeds,” she said.

The launch comes as Perplexity faces mounting legal pressure from global publishers, including News Corp, Nikkei, Asahi Shimbun, and the BBC, over alleged unauthorized use of journalism in AI training and outputs. At the same time, the company has recently patched a major security vulnerability in Comet that allowed hidden prompts to manipulate its AI assistant.

What Is Perplexity and Why It Matters

For subscription executives unfamiliar with the brand, Perplexity is an AI-powered “answer engine” that blends large language models with real-time web search. Unlike Google, which returns a list of links, Perplexity provides direct answers with source citations. The company has grown quickly, processing hundreds of millions of queries monthly and attracting major investment from Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and SoftBank.

Comet, its AI browser, launched in July 2025. Built on Chromium, it integrates Perplexity’s assistant directly into the browsing experience. Users can highlight text, ask contextual questions, and even assign the AI to complete tasks like shopping, booking, or synthesizing information across tabs. In short, Comet aims to make the browser itself the AI agent — a direct challenge to Google’s long-standing dominance of how people discover and consume information online.

INSIDER TAKE

For subscription executives, Perplexity’s Comet Plus program highlights a pivotal shift: AI search is no longer just a distribution challenge, it is becoming a monetization model.

On one hand, the opportunity is significant. By paying publishers directly when content is cited, visited, or used by an agent, Perplexity is experimenting with a more transparent system than traditional ad revenue share. If scaled, this could create a new income stream for content-driven subscription businesses and reward participation in the AI ecosystem.

On the other hand, the risks remain high. AI-generated answers strip away context, brand voice, and subscriber relationships. Even if publishers are compensated, there is no guarantee that AI-mediated readers will convert into paying subscribers. Add to this the legal uncertainties and the technical vulnerabilities of AI browsers, and the model still looks unproven.

The bigger story, however, is strategic. Perplexity is not simply patching over criticism with payouts. By launching Comet and tying it to a revenue-sharing model, the company is staking a claim against Google’s dominance in search and distribution. For subscription leaders, the key takeaway is that visibility, monetization, and competition are all being redefined by AI-first platforms. Watching how Comet Plus evolves will be critical in assessing how — and whether — to engage with these models.