Console login Free trial
Console login Free trial

We Make AI Work at Perplexity

Delivering AI Search at Scale

How Perplexity uses Vespa.ai to power fast, accurate, and trusted answers for millions of users.

Perplexity: Where Knowledge Begins 

Perplexity has rapidly become one of the most innovative players in AI-driven search. By combining large language models (LLMs) with real-time retrieval, Perplexity delivers accurate, conversational answers—cited and sourced—at web scale. This intuitive experience stands apart from traditional search engines, offering users a smarter, more transparent way to find trusted information.

And the growth speaks for itself: by March 2024, Perplexity had surpassed 15 million monthly active users, fueled by demand for fast, trustworthy answers across public and private data sources.

Why Retrieval Matters

At the heart of Perplexity’s approach is a simple insight: the quality of AI answers depends on the quality of information fed into the model. While many companies have access to foundational LLMs, Perplexity differentiates by retrieving and ranking relevant content with precision—ensuring that responses are fluent, accurate, timely, and grounded in fact.

“First, solve search, then use it to solve everything else,” as Perplexity CEO and Founder Srinivas puts it.

That’s why Perplexity chose Vespa.ai—the only battle-tested platform capable of powering real-time, production-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) at scale.

Read Jon Bratseth, CEO & Founder, Vespa.ai Blog Perplexity builds AI Search at scale on Vespa.ai

By building on Vespa’s platform, Perplexity delivers accurate, near-real-time responses to more than 15 million monthly users and handles more than 100 million queries each week.

What is RAG?

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is a method for improving the accuracy and transparency of LLM outputs. Instead of relying solely on pre-trained knowledge, RAG works in three key steps:

  • Retrieval – The system searches a curated content store to find the most relevant and up-to-date information for the user’s query.
  • Augmentation – Retrieved content is passed to the LLM to generate a grounded, context-aware response.
  • Generation – The LLM produces an answer based on this real-time context, often including links to original sources.

This approach not only improves accuracy and freshness but also allows responses to be cited—critical for enterprise use cases where trust, auditability, and compliance are non-negotiable.

Why Vespa?

Executing RAG at the scale and speed Perplexity requires is a significant engineering challenge. Vespa makes it possible by combining real-time search, vector similarity, structured filtering, and machine-learned ranking in one unified platform. Here’s how Vespa supports Perplexity:

What This Means for Enterprises

Generative AI pilots prove the opportunity of AI—but scaling those pilots into enterprise-grade systems is hard. Latency, cost, accuracy, and adaptability are all real barriers.

Vespa helps you clear them.

Perplexity’s success proves that Vespa can deliver reliable, high-speed RAG in even the most demanding environments. Whether you’re building internal copilots, customer-facing assistants, or vertical search engines, Vespa provides the core infrastructure to support your growth—from pilot to production.

The RAG Blueprint

A Blueprint for Success

The RAG Blueprint is a modular application template for designing, deploying, and testing production-grade RAG systems for Vespa – the same core architecture that powers Perplexity. It codifies best practices for building accurate and scalable retrieval pipelines using Vespa’s native support for hybrid search, phased ranking, and real-time inference. Designed for developers and architects, the Blueprint serves as a hands-on guide for production-ready implementations, helping teams move faster without compromising on quality or control.

Learn More About Vespa Scalable RAG

To explore how Vespa can help your team build scalable, real-time AI applications, contact us or get started with Vespa Cloud free trial.

 

More Reading

Vespa RAG Solutions Page

Proving the value of RAG in the lab is one thing, but scaling it across an entire enterprise introduces numerous challenges. Vespa drives relevant, accurate, and real-time answers from all of your data, with unbeatable performance.

Vespa RAG Product Features

Vespa delivers accurate results for large language models, recommendation systems, and personalization engines—driving better business outcomes. It combines structured, full-text, and vector search with real-time ranking and filtering using machine learning expressed as tensors.

Enabling GenAI in the Enterprise RAG

This management guide outlines how businesses can deploy generative AI effectively, focusing on RAG to integrate private data for tailored, context-rich responses.

Analyst Report: Why and How RAG Improves GenAI Outcomes

Choosing the right RAG solution means balancing scalability, performance, security, and cost. This research note from BARC helps organizations navigate the key considerations.

Start exploring the Vespa cloud today for free!

You can start a free trial for 14 days at any time. No credit card required!

Start a free trial