Perplexity's Personal Computer AI agent gains Apple shoutout, reveals $2.8B in work completed

Perplexity elaborates on Mac-native 'Personal Computer' platform - 9to5Mac

Apple gave Perplexity a shoutout during its Q2 2026 earnings call yesterday, and now the company is offering more details on why it is building its Mac-first Personal Computer platform. Here are the details. Last month, Perplexity announced Personal Computer, a Mac-native platform built to primarily run on a Mac mini (though it can run on any Mac) and serve as the user's personal agentic assistant running across their local and cloud environments. Here's Perplexity on Personal Computer: Personal Computer is the future of work. It brings multi-model orchestration to your own machine, working across local files, apps, and the web in one system. On a Mac mini, it runs 24/7, letting you begin work from your phone and come back to it done. According to the company, the biggest advantage of Personal Computer is the acknowledgment that a useful AI agent should operate across both local and cloud environments, rather than being limited to "a chat window or run inside an isolated virtual machine next to your apps." Perplexity adds that Personal Computer "builds on the continuity Apple users already expect to get work done no matter where they are." Yesterday, Apple CFO Kevan Parekh mentioned the product during Apple's Q2 2026 earnings call, citing it as an example of developers choosing the Mac as the platform for "enterprise-grade AI assistants:" With Apple silicon and this powerful unified memory architecture, leading AI developers, like Perplexity, are choosing Mac as their preferred platform to build enterprise-grade AI assistants that power autonomous agents and boost workplace productivity. His comment came in the context of the Mac mini and Mac Studio being sold out in several countries worldwide, thanks to the success of agentic platforms such as Personal Computer. Apple would later confirm that availability will remain extremely constrained for several months. Interestingly, Parekh's comment came on the heels of Perplexity's invite-only Ask NYC event, where the company's CEO Aravind Srinivas stressed the fact that the company built Personal Computer to run "on any Mac, with a Mac mini as one of the best ways to deploy it at full capacity." He also revealed that since launch, Personal Computer "has performed more than $2.8B in labor-equivalent work for Pro, Max, and Enterprise subscribers." At the event, Perplexity also announced a series of enterprise-focused updates to Personal Computer, including support for Microsoft Teams, a native Excel integration now in beta, a new workflows feature for repeatable tasks, and deeper data connectors with Snowflake and Databricks. Perplexity also announced a partnership with 1Password that will allow Personal Computer to act inside authenticated tools without exposing user credentials to the model. To learn more about what's coming to Perplexity's Personal Computer, follow this link.

AppleInsider.com

An example of Perplexity Personal Computer at work, from a promotional video Perplexity's Personal Computer arrived on Mac first because it was the best for locally deploying the agentic AI platform, the company has declared. During Apple's quarterly financial results. CEO Kevan Parekh referenced to the growing use of the Mac as a base of operations for AI platforms. Parekh namechecked Perplexity as one such company, taking advantage of Apple Silicon and its unified memory structure. Ahead of Apple's results release and analyst call, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas talked about the Mac during its Ask NYC enterprise and finance event. Specifically, how Personal Computer, its agentic AI platform that works with local files, was made for use on Mac. The local nature of the tool also means it has access to the user's files on the Mac mini, with it able to create and edit them depending on the task at hand. Deemed one of the best and most accessible ways to deploy Personal Computer, the Mac mini has been seized upon by users for the purpose of bringing Perplexity's AI system into their homes and offices. It's a combination of the cloud-based service and the local files owned by the user working in a single hybrid setup. To Perplexity, the Mac mini is one of the "best ways to deploy" Personal Computer "at full capacity." With the nature of work spanning the iPhone and the Mac, Personal Computer "builds on the continuity Apple users already expect" to get their tasks done. This continuity between the iPhone and Mac is important, especially since users can command Personal Computer to do things on their Mac from their iPhone. Since its launch in March, Computer has managed to complete more than $2.8 billion in labor-equivalent work. In the case of Perplexity itself, the team dogfoods with Personal Computer, claiming to increase revenue by five times while increasing headcount by 34%. The event also included a number of other announcements affecting Personal Computer. The experience is being brought to Microsoft Teams, with Personal Computer able to be messaged directly or pulled into a channel without leaving a conversation. There's also a beta of Computer in Excel with a native side-panel, so the model and data can be viewed side-by-side in the spreadsheet tool. Perplexity is also working with 1Password to allow Computer to perform actions in password-protected tools, while preventing the model from seeing the user's credentials. Workflows in Computer will help bundle prompts, context, and the output format for specific enterprise tasks into a single starting point. The idea is to reduce the amount of technical work a user has to get done before the AI platform gets going. A library of workflows is being built up for commonly-run tasks, with there being more than 70 at this time. They can also be shared between team members, scheduled separately, customized, and also run asynchronously. Personal Computer functionality is available to all Perplexity Pro, Max, and Enterprise subscribers using a Mac. Pricing starts from $17 per month for Pro, $167 per month for Max. As for anyone wanting to pick up a Mac mini or a Mac Studio to enjoy this for themselves, they may have a little trouble doing so. During the call, it was revealed that Apple is seeing huge demand and supply constraints that will stick around for several months.