Perplexity signs $750 million AI cloud deal with Microsoft, Bloomberg News reports

Jan 29 (Reuters) - AI startup Perplexity has signed a $750 million agreement with Microsoft MSFT.O to use its Azure cloud service, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The three-year deal will allow Nvidia NVDA.O-backed Perplexity to run a range of AI models through Microsoft's Foundry program, including systems from OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, the report said.

"Perplexity has chosen Microsoft Foundry as its primary AI platform for model sourcing under a new multi-year agreement," a Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters.

Perplexity did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

A Perplexity spokesperson told Bloomberg News that it was partnering with Microsoft "for access to frontier models from X, OpenAI and Anthropic".

The spokesperson told Bloomberg Perplexity has not shifted spending from Amazon Web Services, the startup's main cloud provider, as part of the Microsoft deal.

Amazon AMZN.O sued Perplexity last year over the startup's "agentic" shopping feature, which uses automation to place orders for users, saying it covertly accessed Amazon customer accounts and disguised automated activity as human browsing.