Perplexity is releasing a work-focused AI agent product called Teammates, putting the startup in direct competition with OpenAI and Anthropic. The always-on agents can fill several roles inside a workspace at once. They also draw on existing projects, skills and memory from Perplexity tools that users already work with.
Teammates is built alongside Perplexity Computer, an AI system that can deploy agents on a user's device to finish tasks. According to Perplexity, Teammates extends Computer by adding collaboration and support for ongoing, large-scale work. Users can give individual Teammates separate assignments to carry out at the same time. The setup resembles OpenAI's Dots and Claude Duet, which offer comparable agent capabilities.
Access carries a steep price: Teammates requires a subscription to Perplexity's Max plan, which costs $200 per month. That makes Perplexity's version considerably more expensive than the competing offerings.
Users can follow what their Teammates are doing through individual threads in the Perplexity app. They can also interact with the agents in Slack. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, writing on X, said the company expects organizations eventually to have hundreds of Teammates working on behalf of each person.
The launch places Perplexity in a crowded field of vendors selling AI agents for workplace tasks. Teammates is the company's answer to products from OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have already shipped agent features for work. Perplexity has been expanding its lineup beyond its answer engine. In October, Perplexity Computer gained the ability to run fully offline on Mac, a feature that requires a large amount of RAM. In August, the company introduced a Portable Computer that runs entirely on device. Perplexity also faces a Reddit AI copyright lawsuit that a court allowed to move forward in July.
The company has not said how many Teammates a single Max subscriber can deploy, or when the feature will reach general availability. For US teams weighing agent tools, Teammates sits at the top of Perplexity's pricing tiers.
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