Perplexity just joined the always-on agent race. On November 5, 2026, the company launched Teammates — AI agents that don't wait for a prompt. They own a piece of ongoing work and keep at it around the clock. CEO Aravind Srinivas announced it on X with four words: "Teammates work for you."
What Teammates Actually Do
Each teammate takes on a role and runs on its own isolated computer inside Perplexity Computer — its own desktop, browser and cookies — with memory that carries over between conversations. Teammates can work in parallel, hand tasks to one another, and collaborate with humans through Slack. Instead of writing prompts in a session, you give a high-level goal and the teammate figures out the steps. New teammates run on Claude Opus 5.5 by default, and you can switch the model per teammate or per task.
The Race: Dots, Duet and Now Teammates
Perplexity isn't first to this idea. OpenAI launched Dots at its DevDay in late September — always-on agents you name and put to work — and Anthropic has Claude Duet. Perplexity's pitch is a shift in framing: not an assistant you chat with, but a coworker with a job. The company says its own workspace has run about 10,000 teammates in the last 30 days, though it hasn't named outside customers with measured results yet.
The Catch: $200 a Month
Teammates launched as a research preview for individual Perplexity Max subscribers on the web only, with iOS and desktop apps promised soon. Max costs $200 a month ($167 a month billed annually) and includes 10,000 Computer credits a month. Enterprise plans are excluded for now. Perplexity also cites $1.6 million of work its internal Slack integration produced for 300 employees in four weeks — its own estimate, not an audited saving.
Why It Matters
The direction of travel is clear: AI is moving from chatbots you prompt to coworkers you manage. If Teammates work as advertised, the job description of a knowledge worker starts to include managing a small team of agents. The open question is whether a $200-a-month agent earns its keep — and whether companies will trust an AI with ongoing access to their Slack, files and tools.
Perplexity's bet is that the next AI product isn't a smarter chat window, it's a hire. Teammates are the most literal version of that bet yet — and the price tag means only serious users will find out if it pays off.
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