Perplexity CEO says Teammate agents now add 11 times more work hours a week than in September
Aravind Srinivas says agent hours from Perplexity Teammate are now 11 times the September level, up from 7 times a week earlier. The figures are his own claims.
Perplexity chief executive Aravind Srinivas has put a new number on how much work the company’s own staff are handing to its Teammate agents. In a post on X late on Saturday 14 November (US Eastern time), he wrote that it is now “11x more agent hours per week from Teammate”.
What he claimed
Srinivas said the figure is growing by more than 50% week over week and compared it with 7x a week earlier. That earlier figure came from his 6 November post, in which he said the median Perplexity employee was getting 7 times more agent hours per week from Teammates than in September, and that one in five staff were already at 40 or more agent hours a week.
In the new post he also said the number of employees getting an extra workday (8 or more agent hours) or an extra work week (40 or more hours) from Teammate has more than tripled. He put the value of that work at roughly $80 million to $180 million a year in labour against about $10 million in tokens, or 9 to 19 times the cost depending on the job.
What has not been confirmed
These are internal figures shared by the company’s chief executive. We could not find a Perplexity blog post, filing or other page that publishes the underlying data, the baseline used for “September”, or how agent hours and labour value are measured. Treat them as Srinivas’s claims rather than independently verified results.
Background
Perplexity launched Teammates, personal work agents that run tasks on a user’s behalf, on 5 November. Two days later Srinivas said automation runs had grown 3.7 times from launch day to day two, as we reported.
Our read
Analysis: the numbers describe Perplexity’s own employees, a group that is likely to adopt the product faster than outside customers. They show how the company wants Teammate to be judged, in hours of work and cost per hour, but they are not yet evidence of how the agents perform for paying users.
This report is not legal, financial, or health advice. See the disclaimer.
Primary sources
- Aravind Srinivas on X: 11x more agent hours per week from Teammate Aravind Srinivas on X
- Aravind Srinivas on X: 7x more agent-hours per week than in September Aravind Srinivas on X
- Perplexity CEO says Teammates automation runs grew 3.7x on day two AI Headline Hub
