Snap (a US technology company famous for Snapchat, an application that allows users to send photos, videos, and self-deleted messages after viewing) has just confirmed the termination of a cooperation agreement with AI Perplexity AI, marking the end of a plan that was once expected to bring an AI search engine directly to the platform.
Accordingly, the company said that the two sides had "friendlyly ended the relationship" and current revenue forecasts no longer take into account any contributions from Perplexity.
Previously, in November last year, Snap announced a cooperation agreement worth about 400 million USD in cash and shares.
According to the initial plan, Perplexity's AI search engine will be integrated into Snapchat's chat interface, allowing users to ask questions and receive answers directly in the application.
When announcing the deal, Snap said that revenue from this partnership is expected to start contributing to financial results from 2026. However, the implementation process has encountered many obstacles.
By February this year, Snap confirmed that AI integration has only been tested with a small group of users and the two sides have not yet reached consensus on a more widespread deployment roadmap.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel once assessed the agreement with Perplexity as an important step in the artificial intelligence application strategy to enhance content discovery capabilities on Snapchat. He also said the company wants to continue cooperating with many other AI partners in the future.
Currently, Perplexity has not made an official comment on the termination of cooperation.
Although the AI deal was not as successful as expected, Snap's business activities still recorded positive signals. The company said that Snapchat's global daily active users increased by 5% compared to the same period last year, reaching 483 million people. The number of monthly active users also increased to 965 million people.
According to Snap, this growth momentum comes from new features such as Snap Map and AR Lenses enhanced reality filters, which are strongly attracting young users.
In a press release accompanying the financial report, Evan Spiegel said that the company has returned to user growth momentum, while improving revenue, profit margin and free cash flow in the first quarter of the year.
Besides generative AI, Snap is also placing high expectations on smart glasses and wearable technology devices.
The company said it will share more strategies related to the Specs glasses line at the Augmented World Expo 2026 event taking place on June 16.
However, Snap is still in a period of strong restructuring. In April, the company announced cuts of about 16% of the global workforce, equivalent to about 1,000 full-time employees. Snap said that the rapid changes in AI technology are one of the reasons for this decision.
