Perplexity CEO Highlights AI Coding Tools' Profound Impact on Productivity
Perplexity's CEO details the revolutionary impact of AI coding tools on developer productivity.
Key Points
- • AI tools drastically reduce coding time from days to hours.
- • Perplexity's queries rose from 3,000 daily to 30 million in a year.
- • The company is launching an AI web browser called Comet.
- • Perplexity is in talks for a $500 million funding round.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has reported transformative shifts in productivity due to the implementation of AI coding tools, stating that these tools have dramatically reduced project work time from three to four days down to just one hour. This revelation was shared on July 18, 2025, amid the company’s impressive growth trajectory, which includes handling 780 million queries in May alone—a 20% increase month-over-month and a rise from only 3,000 queries daily during its launch in 2022.
Srinivas emphasized the substantial impact of tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor, which have become mandatory for Perplexity engineers. Despite the remarkable efficiency these tools provide, he also acknowledged that they come with challenges, such as the introduction of bugs that require engineers to adapt their coding practices.
Propelling this technological momentum, Perplexity is set to unveil Comet, an AI-powered web browser designed to compete with established giants like Google. Srinivas is confident that larger tech companies may struggle to replicate the innovative capabilities of Comet due to the considerable resources and time needed for such developments. Furthermore, Perplexity is actively negotiating a $500 million funding round that could elevate its valuation to $14 billion, highlighting the trust investors have in the future of AI in software development.