Cerebras-Perplexity deal targets $100B search market with ultra-fast AI

Cerebras Systems and Perplexity AI are joining forces to challenge the dominance of conventional search engines, announcing a partnership that promises to deliver near-instantaneous AI-powered search results at speeds previously thought impossible.

The collaboration, announced today in an exclusive VentureBeat report, centers on Perplexity’s new Sonar model, which runs on Cerebras’s specialized AI chips at 1,200 tokens per second—making it one of the fastest AI search systems available. Built on Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B foundation, Sonar represents a significant bet that users will embrace AI-first search experiences if they’re fast enough.

“Our partnership with Cerebras has been instrumental in bringing Sonar to life,” said Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s CEO, in a statement. “Cerebras’s cutting-edge AI inference infrastructure has enabled us to achieve unprecedented speeds and efficiency.”

AI search just got faster—and Big Tech should pay attention

The timing is notable, coming just days after Cerebras made headlines with its DeepSeek implementation, which demonstrated speeds 57 times faster than traditional GPU-based solutions. The company appears to be leveraging this momentum to establish itself as the go-to provider for high-speed AI inference.

According to Perplexity’s internal testing, Sonar outperforms both GPT-4o mini and Claude 3.5 Haiku “by a substantial margin” in user satisfaction metrics, while matching or exceeding more expensive models like Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The company’s evaluations show Sonar achieving factuality scores of 85.1 out of 100, compared to 83.9 for GPT-4o and 75.8 for Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

Specialized hardware: The new battleground for AI companies

The partnership reflects a growing trend of AI companies seeking competitive advantages through specialized hardware. Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman recently argued that such technological advances expand rather than contract the market. “Every time compute has been made less expensive, they [public market investors] have systematically assumed that made the market smaller. And in every single instance, over 50 years, it’s made the market bigger,” Feldman told ZDNET in a recent interview.

Industry analysts suggest this alliance could pressure traditional search providers and other AI companies to reconsider their hardware strategies. The ability to deliver near-instant results could prove particularly compelling for enterprise customers, where speed and accuracy directly impact productivity.

Market impact: Can specialized chips reshape enterprise search?

However, questions remain about the scalability and cost-effectiveness of specialized AI chips compared to traditional GPU-based solutions. While Cerebras has demonstrated impressive speed advantages, the company faces the challenge of convincing customers that the performance benefits justify potential premium pricing.

The partnership also highlights the increasingly competitive landscape in AI search, where companies are racing to differentiate themselves through speed and accuracy rather than just raw model size. For Perplexity, which has been gaining attention as an AI-native alternative to traditional search engines, the Cerebras partnership could help establish it as a serious contender in the enterprise search market.

Perplexity plans to make Sonar available to Pro users initially, with broader availability coming soon. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of their partnership.