Perplexity launches always-on Teammates agents to challenge OpenAI and Anthropic

Perplexity enters the agent race with Teammates

Perplexity has launched Teammates, a set of always-on AI agents built for workplace use, according to The Verge. The release puts the startup, best known for its AI search engine, in direct competition with OpenAI and Anthropic in the increasingly crowded market for autonomous work agents.

The core idea is persistence. Rather than answering a single prompt and shutting down, a Teammate holds an ongoing role inside a workspace. According to The Verge, users can assign each agent a different job and run several at the same time, with the agents drawing on existing projects, stored skills and memory from the Perplexity tools a person already uses.

Built on top of Perplexity Computer

Teammates connect to Perplexity Computer, the company's system for deploying agents that operate on a user's device to carry out tasks. Perplexity frames Teammates as a layer above that foundation, The Verge reports: where Computer handles discrete tasks, Teammates are designed to collaborate and take on what the company describes as "ongoing, large-scale work."

Oversight happens in two places. The Verge says users can follow each agent's progress through its own thread in the Perplexity app, and can also interact with Teammates directly in Slack.

Priced well above the competition

The parallels to rival products are explicit. According to The Verge, Teammates mirror OpenAI's Dots and Anthropic's Claude Duet, which also let users spin up multiple agents with distinct, simultaneous responsibilities.

The major difference is cost. Teammates require a subscription to Perplexity's Max plan, which runs $200 per month, and The Verge characterizes that as far more expensive than the comparable offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Perplexity is betting that organizations will pay a premium for agents that stay on the job. CEO Aravind Srinivas, in a post on X quoted by The Verge, laid out the long-term ambition: "Over time, we envision every org having hundreds of teammates working for each person."

Why it matters

The launch confirms that AI agents are shifting from novelty toward infrastructure. OpenAI, Anthropic and now Perplexity are converging on the same pitch: not a chatbot you consult, but a persistent digital workforce you delegate to. Perplexity's entry is notable because it extends the company beyond consumer search into the enterprise, where recurring subscription revenue and deep workflow integration matter more than one-off answer quality.

Pricing is the tension point. At $200 per month, Teammates are positioned as a premium product, and The Verge's assessment that Perplexity costs considerably more than its rivals suggests the company is either confident in a capability advantage or willing to accept a price disadvantage against competitors with established enterprise footholds.

The scale Srinivas describes, with hundreds of agents per employee, also raises practical questions the industry has not yet resolved: how organizations supervise, audit and correct large fleets of autonomous agents doing continuous work. Per-agent threads and Slack integration are early answers, but the gap between the vision of agent labor and reliable human oversight remains the central unresolved challenge for every player in this space.