There was a very brief period in the early days where Perplexity actually was pretty useful. I believe I even had a paid subscription to it for maybe half a year at that time. The main value it had then is that ChatGPT didn't yet incorporate web search, or early on after it did its searches were will really limited. There's no reason for Perplexity to exist now. I'm confident they and their investors are keeping it going mainly because no one wants to be the first major AI startup wipeout.