Perplexity AI vs Scale AI: Revenue, Profit and Business Model
Perplexity AI had $80M (unaudited) of annual revenue in FY2025. Scale AI had $870M (unaudited) of annual revenue in FY2024.
Latest financial snapshot
Perplexity AI
- Latest annual revenue
- $80M (unaudited) (FY2025)
- Net income
- Unavailable here
- Net margin
- —
- Revenue growth
- —
Scale AI
- Latest annual revenue
- $870M (unaudited) (FY2024)
- Net income
- Unavailable here
- Net margin
- —
- Revenue growth
- —
Financial summary
Perplexity AI
Perplexity has experienced exponential revenue expansion since commercializing in 2023. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew from roughly $5 million in late 2023 to $35 million in mid-2024 and exceeded $80 million by late 2025. The company raised a $73.6 million Series B in January 2024 ($520 million valuation), a $62.7 million round in April 2024 ($1.04 billion valuation), a $250 million round in June 2024 ($3 billion valuation), and a funding round in late 2024 that pushed its private valuation to $9 billion.
Scale AI
Scale is private and does not publish audited results. Bloomberg reported about $870 million of revenue in 2024 and a target near $2 billion for 2025 before the Meta deal. After OpenAI and Google pulled back, that target looked out of reach, but CEO Jason Droege wrote in early 2026 that 2025 was Scale's biggest revenue year, with more than $1 billion in new business and nearly half of bookings in Q4. The company valued itself at more than $29 billion in the June 2025 Meta transaction, up from $13.8 billion in its May 2024 Series F. Net income has not been disclosed, though Scale says the data business is now profitable.
Revenue and profit by year
Perplexity AI
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 (unaudited) | $80M | — | — | — | |
| FY2024 (unaudited) | $35M | — | — | — | |
| FY2023 (unaudited) | $5M | — | — | — |
Scale AI
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2024 (unaudited) | $870M | — | — | — | Source |
| FY2023 (unaudited) | $335M | — | — | — | Source |
| FY2022 (unaudited) | $290M | — | — | — | Source |
Where the revenue comes from
Perplexity AI
- Core Artificial Intelligence, Conversational Search & Information Retrieval Platform Operations
~52% of Total Net Revenue
Direct software licensing, subscription access, platform usage fees, or primary transaction commissions derived from Perplexity AI, Inc.'s flagship offerings.
- Enterprise Solutions & Value-Added Services
~31% of Total Net Revenue
Custom enterprise deployments, premium capability tiers, specialized API integrations, and dedicated technical client support.
- Ancillary Services & Strategic Ecosystem Billing
~17% of Total Net Revenue
Complementary service fees, partner ecosystem revenue sharing, financing fees, and transactional processing services.
Scale AI
- Data business
Not disclosed
Training data, RL environments, robotics data and evaluations for AI labs and large technology companies; profitable since the second half of 2025, per the company.
- Applications: enterprise
Not disclosed
Generative AI applications for companies such as Mayo Clinic, BP and Allianz.
- Applications: public sector
Not disclosed
AI programs for the U.S. Department of War and international governments including Qatar, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Business model and strategy
Perplexity AI
How it makes money
Perplexity AI operates a multi-tiered subscription and enterprise monetization model. In consumer subscription revenue, Perplexity Pro charges $20 per month or $200 annually, granting users access to frontier foundation models (OpenAI o1/GPT-4o, Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and proprietary Sonar models), unlimited file uploads, and advanced visual generation.
Growth strategy
Perplexity drives customer acquisition through mobile app distribution, telecom carrier distribution partnerships (including major distribution bundles with SoftBank in Japan and Deutsche Telekom in Europe), and viral social sharing of Perplexity Pages.
Competitive advantage
Perplexity's core economic moat is its specialized retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architecture and neutral multi-model orchestration layer. Unlike Google or Microsoft, which are incentivized to protect legacy ad-clicking real estate and push proprietary ecosystems, Perplexity is built entirely around direct factual synthesis with clickable inline citations.
Scale AI
How it makes money
Scale AI earns money in two ways. Its data business charges AI labs and large technology companies for training data, reinforcement learning environments and model evaluations, produced by software pipelines plus a paid contributor network run through Outlier and Remotasks; the company says it has paid contributors more than $1 billion over ten years.
Growth strategy
Scale's 2026 plan, as described by its leadership, is to move technical capabilities from the data business into applications faster, invest in a unified AI-native platform for enterprise and government customers, and expand abroad. It opened or grew offices in New York, London, Washington, D.C., Doha, St.
Competitive advantage
Scale's advantages are scale, track record and government access. It has applied what it calls 15 billion human decisions to train leading models across 150 languages and locales, it runs SEAL benchmarks such as Humanity's Last Exam and SWE-Bench Pro that labs cite at launch, and it holds U.S.
Questions about Perplexity AI vs Scale AI
Which company has higher revenue — Perplexity AI, Inc. or Scale AI, Inc.?
Perplexity AI, Inc. had $80.0M (unaudited) (FY2025), while Scale AI, Inc. had $870.0M (unaudited) (FY2024). By latest annual revenue, Scale AI, Inc. is the larger business, with Perplexity AI, Inc. showing a smaller revenue base. Note: these are from different fiscal years and are not a direct like-for-like comparison.
How does revenue per employee compare for Perplexity AI, Inc. and Scale AI, Inc.?
Perplexity AI, Inc. has $364k / employee in revenue per employee, while Scale AI, Inc. has $725k / employee. Headcounts may use different dates, so the ratio alone does not establish which business operates more efficiently.
How do Perplexity AI, Inc. and Scale AI, Inc. make money?
Perplexity AI, Inc. and Scale AI, Inc. generate revenue in fundamentally different ways. Perplexity AI, Inc.: Perplexity AI operates a multi-tiered subscription and enterprise monetization model. Scale AI, Inc.: Scale AI earns money in two ways.
Is Perplexity AI, Inc. bigger than Scale AI, Inc.?
By last reported revenue, Scale AI, Inc. ($870.0M (unaudited) (FY2024)) is the larger company compared to Perplexity AI, Inc. ($80.0M (unaudited) (FY2025)). Revenue scale is one dimension of size — market capitalisation, employee count, and geographic reach are also relevant depending on the context.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Perplexity AI vs Scale AI overview