Nvidia is in discussions to join Perplexity AI's new funding round that would value the AI search and agent startup above $30 billion and raise several billion dollars, The Information reported. The talks initially involved licensing Perplexity's technology and hiring employees but have shifted to a conventional equity investment. Perplexity's annualized revenue has more than tripled to over $750 million, driven by its AI search subscription and the Perplexity Computer AI agent product for autonomous computer tasks. In March, Perplexity joined the Nvidia-led Nemotron Coalition, and the companies are partnering on AI agents with Perplexity deploying Vera CPUs via CoreWeave. Nvidia recently valued Poolside at $12 billion, investing $1 billion for equity while paying $6 billion for software licenses and absorbing 109 engineers to develop Nemotron models including the lightweight Nemotron 3.5 Lightning. The moves aim to build a US-based open AI ecosystem and counter Chinese models like DeepSeek and Moonshot's Kimi K3, as Jensen Huang stressed. Nvidia is also expanding data center investments and faces rising chip prices, amid slower-than-expected AI adoption per OpenAI's Sam Altman and OpenAI's sales turmoil.