Perplexity Unveils $42.5M Revenue-Sharing Program for Publishers Amid Legal Battles

AI search startup Perplexity is introducing a $42.5 million revenue-sharing program aimed at compensating publishers when their articles are used in its products, Bloomberg reported. The initiative comes as the company faces plagiarism lawsuits and mounting scrutiny from media outlets.

Under the program, publishers will earn revenue based on how often their content is accessed through Comet, Perplexity’s internet browser, or its AI assistant. Payments will also be tied to engagement generated when articles appear in search results or are used to complete tasks.

Funding for the payouts will come from Comet Plus, a $5-per-month subscription service that offers curated content from partner publishers. Perplexity says participating outlets will retain 80% of subscription revenue, while it will keep the remainder.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said the initiative is designed to strike a balance between innovation and fair compensation for journalism. “AI is helping to create a better internet, but publishers still need to get paid,” he told Bloomberg.

The company first tested a similar model in July 2024, after facing accusations of plagiarism from news organizations. Early participants included Fortune, Time, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and Der Spiegel. By December, Perplexity had expanded the model to publishers in the UK, Japan, Spain, and Latin America.

The program sets Perplexity apart from rivals such as OpenAI and Google, which have pursued multimillion-dollar licensing agreements but have not introduced usage-based revenue sharing. OpenAI has said it does not plan to share revenue with publishers.

Still, Perplexity remains under legal pressure. Forbes and Condé Nast have accused the startup of using their reporting in AI-generated summaries without attribution. Dow Jones and the New York Post are suing the company for copyright infringement, after Perplexity’s motion to dismiss their case was rejected.

The AI search startup‘s spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said the company is confident in its legal position. “We are confident AI companies will win all of these lawsuits. We look forward to settling the law on this early on, so that everyone can benefit from AI,” he said.

Cloudflare has also alleged that Perplexity bypassed site protections to extract content, a claim the startup disputes. The company maintains that its AI assistant only accesses web pages when prompted by users, rather than scraping data like traditional crawlers.

The broader tension between AI firms and publishers is intensifying. News organizations argue that AI tools divert traffic by serving summaries instead of directing readers to original reporting. In 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI for allegedly using its content without authorization.

Jessica Chan, Perplexity’s head of publisher partnerships, said the company is attempting to modernize compensation models for news. Relying on website clicks, she argued, is “an old model” as users increasingly seek answers directly from AI. Perplexity, she said, wants to set “a new standard for compensation.”

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