Perplexity Launches AI Agent Teams, Boosting Real‑Time Collaboration Across Enterprises

Perplexity’s “Computer” digital worker arrives as the first cloud‑only, multi‑model AI orchestrator aimed at enterprise teams, according to a detailed PCWorld report. The service, exclusive to Perplexity Max subscribers, marshals a roster of 19 distinct models—including Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 as the core reasoning engine, Google’s Gemini for deep research, Nano Banana for image generation, Veo 3.1 for video stitching, Grok for lightweight tasks, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5.2 for long‑context recall—to execute end‑to‑end projects such as dashboards, web apps, slide decks, and animated GIFs. Unlike the open‑source OpenClaw platform, which runs on a user’s local hardware, Computer lives entirely in Perplexity’s walled‑garden cloud, interacting with external services through a suite of pre‑built integrations (PCWorld).

The launch marks a rapid transition from an internal experiment to a public product; Perplexity’s chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko said the tool was built in just a month after his team observed that “work that would take weeks for a team was getting done overnight while we slept” (PCWorld). By delegating sub‑agents to handle discrete steps—fetching API keys, writing code, conducting secondary research—Computer can deliver a finished artifact without human intervention. Shevelenko likened the system to a “massively multi‑model orchestration system,” emphasizing that it operates the same interfaces a human would, from Slack to the Perplexity app itself (PCWorld).

Pricing positions Computer as a premium productivity layer: VentureBeat reports a subscription fee of $200 per month, reflecting the cost of coordinating 19 models and the extensive cloud infrastructure required to keep the agents in sync (VentureBeat). The price point also signals Perplexity’s intent to compete directly with emerging personal‑AI platforms such as Meta’s Manus AI and the open‑source OpenClaw suite, which have spurred a wave of GitHub forks and corporate pivots in recent weeks (PCWorld). By keeping the execution environment cloud‑based, Perplexity sidesteps the security concerns that have plagued local‑agent tools, but it also imposes a sandbox that limits direct device access—a trade‑off the company argues is worth the added safety (PCWorld).

Early adopters are already testing Computer’s ability to replace routine office workflows. VentureBeat notes that Perplexity’s autonomous email assistant, launched alongside Computer, can manage inboxes, draft personalized replies, and schedule meetings for a flat $200 monthly fee (VentureBeat). While the assistant is a separate feature, its integration with the broader agent ecosystem hints at a longer‑term strategy: a unified AI “digital worker” that can handle everything from email triage to full‑scale product prototypes. Analysts have not yet quantified the productivity gains, but Perplexity’s internal metrics suggest that multi‑step tasks that previously required coordinated human effort can now be completed in a single overnight run (PCWorld).

The broader AI market is watching closely. OpenClaw’s rapid rise sparked a “personal AI agent” craze, prompting major players—including Meta, Anthropic, and Google—to accelerate their own agentic offerings (PCWorld). Perplexity’s cloud‑first approach differentiates it from the hardware‑centric competitors, but it also raises questions about data residency, integration depth, and vendor lock‑in. As enterprises evaluate whether to entrust critical workflows to a walled‑garden service, Perplexity’s success will hinge on the reliability of its multi‑model coordination and the tangible ROI that the $200 subscription can deliver.