The news: Perplexity added a standalone subscription tier for its Comet agentic AI browser that will fund a $42.5 million publisher revenue-sharing program.

• Comet Plus costs $5 per month and gives users access to “premium content from a group of trusted publishers and journalists.” The browser is included in Perplexity Pro and Max subscriptions.
• Publishers can earn money when their content drives web traffic through Comet, appears in Comet search results, or is used by the browser’s AI assistant.

Funding for the program comes from revenues generated by Comet Plus. Eighty percent of those revenues will go to publishers and Perplexity will keep the rest, per Bloomberg.

Getting a better deal? As profits for AI firms explode, publishers may no longer view flat-fee licensing deals as equitable.

Instead, Perplexity is implementing a “pay per crawl” usage-based deal, which lets platforms and publishers see ongoing benefits as their content supplements or improves AI responses.

The company stated in a blog post that publishers and brands deserve a better compensation model and that those adapting to AI’s web dominance have “lost trust from readers and eroded their brands to stay afloat.”

Zooming out: Perplexity’s new offering comes amid lawsuits and increased scrutiny over how AI search tools and chatbots are surfacing information and whether content sourcing amounts to copyright infringement. Its payout model could serve as a legal pressure valve as much as a goodwill gesture.

Details about who’s participating in Perplexity’s program are scarce and trust may still be lacking, considering the company’s rocky history with content sourcing and scraping.

Room for doubt: Despite Perplexity’s stated intention to help publishers benefit from AI’s rise, questions remain over whether this program is a scalable model or just a PR play ahead of regulatory and legal action.

Some potential roadblocks:

• Users may not be enticed to pay for a browser subscription, considering similar features are available on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge for free.
• A share of Comet Plus revenues may not be meaningful if the subscriber base is small.

Still, this could be an experiment worth watching for both publishers seeking sustainable monetization and AI companies aiming to mitigate legal risks.

Our take: Perplexity may be the first major AI firm to move in this direction, but others could follow and help usage-based models become the standard.

Brands should actively monitor how their content is used across AI platforms and consider usage-based deals for fair compensation, especially if content is regularly surfaced by AI tools. They should also examine the real revenue potential of partnerships like Comet Plus and scrutinize audience size, payout structures, and long-term sustainability before committing.

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