According to TechRepublic, Snap Inc. just struck a $400 million deal with Perplexity AI that will bring conversational search directly into Snapchat’s chat interface starting in early 2026. Perplexity will pay this amount in cash and equity to power AI search features for Snapchat’s approximately 940 million monthly active users. The announcement came right after Snap’s Q3 2025 earnings, where the company reported $1.51 billion in revenue with 10% year-over-year growth and narrowed its loss to $104 million. Snap expects to begin booking income from this partnership in 2026, fundamentally changing how users discover content without leaving the app.
Search Gets Social
Here’s what makes this deal genuinely interesting: we’re watching search evolve from something you do in a separate box to something that happens naturally within conversations. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says they want AI to be “more personal, social, and fun” – woven directly into your friendships and chats. Basically, instead of stopping your conversation to open Google, you’ll just ask your question in the chat and get an AI-powered answer right there.
And that’s the real shift here. Traditional search requires you to leave the context you’re in. This keeps you exactly where you are. It turns casual “Hey, what’s that restaurant we went to last year?” moments into immediate, shareable answers. For Snap, it’s about becoming the platform where discovery happens naturally rather than forcing users elsewhere.
Perplexity’s Big Bet
Now, $400 million is serious money for Perplexity. But look at what they‘re buying: immediate access to nearly a billion users. That’s distribution at scale that would take years to build organically. They’re essentially paying for the privilege of becoming Snapchat’s search brain.
The timing is fascinating too. This comes when Snap is showing solid revenue growth but still posting losses. That $400 million injection matters. It’s not just strategic – it’s financially significant for a company that lost $104 million last quarter. And for Perplexity? They’re betting that chat-based discovery inside social apps will be the next battleground, not traditional web search.
The Broader Implications
This feels like part of a larger trend we’re seeing across tech. Remember when Snap introduced AI-powered lenses? That was just the beginning. Now we’re seeing full-scale search integration. The official partnership announcement frames this as transforming how people get information, but the subtext is clearer: social apps want to own more of the user experience.
So what happens to traditional search engines when your favorite chat app can answer questions instantly? And will users trust AI-generated answers the same way they trust search results? Those are the billion-dollar questions – literally.
The integration doesn’t launch until early 2026, so we’ve got time to see how this plays out. But one thing’s clear: the lines between social networking, messaging, and search are blurring fast. And companies are willing to pay hundreds of millions to be at that intersection.
