In a significant development in the global AI race, Aravind Srinivas-led Perplexity AI has surpassed OpenAI's ChatGPT to take the top spot among free apps on the Apple App Store.
The abrupt surge follows a strategic alliance with telecom operator Airtel, which now provides its customers with free access to the premium Perplexity Pro subscription, which costs Rs 17,000 a year.
Access to several state-of-the-art AI models, such as GPT-4.1, Claude, Grok 4, and image generation tools, is made possible by Perplexity Pro.
Additionally, it gives non-paying users early access to the company's exclusive Comet browser, which is currently invite-only.
Even though Perplexity is at the top of the iOS charts, ChatGPT is still the most popular app on the Google Play Store, where Perplexity hasn't yet made an appearance.
Another strong candidate, Google's Gemini, is presently ranked fifth on the App Store's list of free apps.
To regain focus, OpenAI, under the direction of Sam Altman, is relying on its newly released ChatGPT agent, a general-purpose assistant that can handle user responsibilities like email reading, web browsing, and presentation creation.
The company's popularity was further cemented a few months ago when its GPT-4-powered image generation went viral worldwide.
However, trends are short-lived in this rapidly evolving AI ecosystem. Elon Musk's Grok saw a surge in interest following the release of Grok 3 and the viral Ghibli-style image trend, while Chinese AI company DeepSeek made headlines earlier this year by directly challenging ChatGPT with its own models.
Perplexity, which was founded in 2022, has become a powerful force in generative AI.
The startup demonstrated investor and user confidence in its quick growth and strategic vision by tripling its valuation from $1 billion to $3 billion last year and considering the use cases of AI tools going forward, it may thrive further as well.
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