Perplexity pays both ends: multi-year GPU rents at IREN, lawsuits from the Times and Tribune

PerplexityPVT$20.51B — Perplexity, private, latest valuation $20.51B just signed a multi-year contract to rent NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPU capacity from IREN↗, the data-center operator turned AI cloud, to power the models and agents behind Perplexity Computer. The deal was announced on Friday, October 31, and it covers capacity at one of IREN's▲+8.81% — IREN, up 8.81 percent today campuses ¹. Four days from now, IREN reports earnings, and this customer relationship is suddenly a line item investors can count.

A $30 billion company renting the machines it answers with

Perplexity is not a small bet anymore. A fresh funding round that includes Nvidia valued the answer-engine company at US$30 billion↗, up from $20 billion a year earlier, with the jump tied to the launch of its Perplexity Computer agent system ³. Nvidia▲+2.48% — Nvidia, up 2.48 percent today is now on both sides of Perplexity's stack: a shareholder through the round ³ and, through IREN, the ultimate supplier of the chips under contract ¹.

That is the arrangement in one sentence: Perplexity answers questions about the world, and it pays multi-year rent on the hardware that makes the answers possible ¹.

The two bills, and the lawsuits setting one of them

Here is the complication. Perplexity's cost base has two big lines, and it controls the pricing of neither. The compute bill is set in data-center contracts like the IREN agreement ¹. The content bill is being set in courtrooms.

The Chicago Tribune and The New York Times sued Perplexity a day apart↗, the snapshot dates the filings December 4 and 5, alleging the company copies their archives wholesale and delivers the journalism "without permission or compensation" ². The Tribune complaint names the consumer answer engine, the enterprise chatbot, the APIs and the Comet browser, meaning the copying claim reaches the whole product, not one output ². An earlier Amazon▲+2.35% — Amazon, up 2.35 percent today suit over Perplexity's shopping agent is also live ².

Publishers who settled chose licensing deals instead ². Every settlement or judgment converts content from free raw material into a recurring cost, on top of the GPU rents. Both bills are paid from the same answer revenue.

The supplier's side of the trade is measurable

IREN shows what named-customer demand is worth. Its AI cloud business produced $70.5 million in revenue last quarter, passing bitcoin mining's $66.7 million for the first time, and Perplexity was named as the newest AI cloud customer in IREN's August 27 results ¹. The multi-year deal announced Friday builds on that relationship ¹.

The whole company's numbers are rougher than the AI segment's: revenue has slid for three straight quarters, and IREN reports fiscal Q1 2027 on November 5↗ with consensus at $221.71 million of revenue and a loss of $0.76 per share ¹⁴. B. Riley cut its price target on IREN from $91 to $64 on Friday while keeping its buy rating, a signal that demand and profitability are being judged separately ¹.

What to watch

Two dated readings settle the argument. IREN's November 5 print shows whether the Perplexity relationship converts into AI cloud revenue growth ¹. After that, watch how the Times and Tribune suits price content licensing into Perplexity's economics ahead of any IPO ². A company valued at $30 billion that rents its compute on multi-year terms and does not yet own its raw material is a margin story waiting for its numbers ¹²³.

For readers who want the backstory: six publishers were already suing Perplexity before this month, and Amazon's separate fight over its shopping agent is covered in our earlier reporting on the Amazon case and the publisher suits.