What Are Perplexity Teammates?
Think of Teammates as a team of AI agents that you can hire to manage ongoing work. Instead of writing a new prompt for every single request, you can assign a Teammate a long-term responsibility. For example, you could assign one Teammate to monitor a marketing
campaign, another to track bug reports in a software project, or a third to research a new market. These agents are designed to be proactive, working around the clock in the background. They can plan tasks, use tools, access files, and even bring in other AI agents if a project's scope grows. When a decision is needed, the Teammate notifies you for review. The feature is built on top of Perplexity's existing 'Computer' platform, which gives AI agents the ability to use applications and perform multi-step tasks.
A Strategic Shift From Answers to Action
This new feature represents a significant strategic pivot for Perplexity. The company built its reputation as a powerful 'answer engine', providing direct, citation-backed responses to user queries. While that remains a core function, Teammates moves the company firmly into the territory of agentic productivity. The focus is no longer just on finding information, but on 'owning' and executing work. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas described it as changing the paradigm from writing prompts within a session to delegating high-level goals. The company has been testing this heavily internally, with Srinivas revealing that they created approximately 10,000 AI Teammates inside the company in just one month — a number that is 20 times their human headcount.
How It Works and Who Gets It First
Teammates launched in early November 2026 as a research preview. Initially, access is limited to subscribers of Perplexity's highest tier, the 'Max' plan, which is aimed at power users. Each Teammate operates in its own persistent thread, almost like a dedicated chat with a colleague, where you can see its progress and give new instructions. These agents can also collaborate with each other and even communicate with human coworkers through integrations with platforms like Slack. For now, the feature is only available on the web. The company has confirmed that native apps for mobile (iOS and Android) and desktop are planned for a later date, though a specific timeline has not been announced. This phased rollout suggests Perplexity is carefully managing the compute-intensive nature of these powerful agents.
Entering a Crowded Field
With Teammates, Perplexity is stepping into a competitive arena dominated by tech giants. Companies like Microsoft, with its Copilot agents integrated into the 365 suite, and Google are aggressively pushing AI into workplace productivity tools. Other major AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are also developing similar agentic systems. Perplexity's strategy appears to be leveraging its speed and focus. While it can't compete on the sheer number of existing enterprise seats held by Microsoft or Google, it can bet on winning over individual professionals and small teams who want a more agile, browsernded agent that isn't tied to a specific office suite. The introduction of Teammates is a clear signal that the future of AI isn't just about chatbots than about autonomous systems that actively participate in our work.
