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Perplexity AI launches Teammates, 24/7 AI agents for work, similar to OpenAI's Dots.

Editorial illustration for Perplexity launches Teammates AI agents for work, running 24/7 like OpenAI's Dots

Perplexity Launches Teammates AI Agents for Work

• 4 min read

Perplexity rolled out "Teammates" on Thursday, its own entry in the crowded field of always-on AI agents built for office work. The feature lets users assign specific roles to AI agents that run continuously inside a workspace, pulling from projects, skills, and memory already stored in Perplexity's other tools. It's the company's answer to OpenAI's Dots and Anthropic's Claude Duet, both of which let multiple agents handle separate tasks at once rather than waiting for a single prompt-and-response exchange.

Teammates plug into Perplexity Computer, the system the company already uses to deploy agents directly on a user's device. Perplexity frames the new feature as a layer built on top of that existing system, aimed at longer-running, larger projects rather than one-off tasks. Users can track what each Teammate is doing through individual threads in the Perplexity app, or check in via Slack.

The catch is price. Unlike some competing tools, Teammates only comes with Perplexity's Max plan, which runs $200 a month. CEO Aravind Srinivas has already laid out where he thinks this goes.

Perplexity is taking on OpenAI and Anthropic with its own work-focused AI agents. The startup’s new always-on “Teammates” can take on multiple roles within a workspace, while pulling existing projects, skills, and memory from the Perplexity tools you already use.

Why this matters

Perplexity's move tells us the "agent for work" category is consolidating into a predictable playbook: pick a name (Teammates, Dots, Duet), bolt it onto existing tools, promise 24/7 availability, ship. That's not a knock on the engineering, it's a sign the hard part now isn't building an agent that can run tasks continuously, it's proving one is worth trusting with a workspace's memory and projects unsupervised. For founders, this is a signal that differentiation won't come from "always-on" as a feature, everyone will have that within a year.

For developers, the integration with Perplexity's existing skills and memory layer is the part worth watching closely, that's where lock-in and reliability questions actually live. For researchers, the interesting open question is governance: what happens when a Teammate makes a bad call at 3 a.m. with nobody watching?

Perplexity, OpenAI, and Anthropic are all racing to answer "can it work alone," but none have convincingly answered "should it," and that gap is where the real competition will eventually get decided.

Common Questions Answered

How do Perplexity's Teammates AI agents differ from OpenAI's Dots and Anthropic's Claude Duet?

Perplexity's Teammates allow users to assign specific roles to AI agents that run continuously within a workspace while pulling from existing projects, skills, and memory already stored in Perplexity's other tools. Like Dots and Claude Duet, Teammates enable multiple agents to handle separate tasks simultaneously rather than waiting for single prompt-and-response interactions, positioning them as direct competitors in the always-on AI agent market.

What are the key features of Perplexity's Teammates for office work?

Teammates are designed as always-on AI agents that can take on multiple roles within a workspace and operate continuously 24/7. The agents integrate with existing Perplexity tools and can access stored projects, skills, and memory to perform work tasks without requiring constant user prompts.

What does the article suggest is the main challenge for AI agent companies moving forward?

According to the article, the hard part for AI agent companies is no longer building an agent that can run tasks continuously, but rather proving that one is trustworthy enough to handle a workspace's memory and projects unsupervised. This suggests that differentiation in the agent market will depend on establishing trust and reliability rather than technical capability alone.

How does Perplexity's Teammates consolidate with existing Perplexity tools?

Teammates pull from projects, skills, and memory already stored in Perplexity's other tools, allowing them to leverage existing workspace data and context. This integration enables the agents to operate more effectively by accessing previously stored information and maintaining continuity with other Perplexity features users already utilize.

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