Cristiano Ronaldo invests in Perplexity.
Credit: Reuters, X/Cristiano Ronaldo
Bengaluru: Portugal legend Cristiano Ronaldo has strengthened his business portfolio off the pitch by investing in Indian-origin tech leader Aravind Srinivas' AI startup Perplexity.
"Curiosity is a requirement for greatness. You win when you keep asking new questions every day. That’s why I am proud to announce my investment in Perplexity," Ronaldo posted on X.
To mark the partnership, the AI startup is launching a Cristiano Ronaldo hub - an interactive CR7 experience where fans can explore his career, see rare images, browse curated questions, relive iconic goals, and dig into the stories behind them.
"It’s an honour to be able to partner with Cristiano and welcome him as an investor to Perplexity. He's relentless and researches all the time on the latest techniques to recover and push the boundaries. We will work together to make Perplexity the best AI for asking questions," Aravind Srinivas said.
Perplexity is powering the world’s curiosity, and together we will inspire everyone to ask more ambitious questions.
Cristiano Ronaldo represents discipline, consistency, and reinvention across every stage of his career. He is more than football’s all‑time leading goal scorer, the AI startup said, adding that Ronaldo is also a dedicated Perplexity user.
Perplexity recently released BrowseSafe, an open research benchmark and content detection model aimed at keeping users safe as they navigate the agentic web.
Founded in August 2022, the startup began with the release of Ask, its answer engine, in December 2022. Perplexity has raised over $1.5 billion across multiple funding rounds and was recently valued at $20 billion. Its investors include Nvidia and SoftBank, among others. Srinivas, who studied at IIT Madras, completed his PhD in Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley, and joined as a research intern at OpenAI (ChatGPT maker). In 2022, Perplexity was founded by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Andy Knowinski and Johnny Ho.