Perplexity's Agent API adds batch mode: 50,000 full agent loops per file
From the AI digest for 2026-10-22
What happened: Perplexity CEO Arav Srinivas announced on 22 October 2026 (~4:35 PM US Eastern) that "Batch API is now live on the Perplexity Agent API," supporting up to 50,000 requests per file, with "full support for web_search and fetch_url in batch mode." The pitched use case is bulk enrichment — "a spreadsheet of 50k companies with live web data overnight" — and the Perplexity Developers account confirms the mechanics: upload a JSONL file of up to 50,000 requests, create a batch, download the results on completion, with a docs page linked.
What's genuinely new: the Agent API — already the substrate under Perplexity Computer and its MCP server — gains a bulk lane: full agent loops (search plus fetch, not just search calls) runnable 50,000 at a time against live web data in a single overnight pass. That moves the index-as-agent-infrastructure thesis from interactive single tasks to overnight batch workloads. "Live" is the vendor's own designation; no pricing, rate limits, or completion-time framing beyond the pitch appears in the window.
Watch: batch pricing against the Search API's on-record benchmark ($0.005 per request); whether Computer's skills and marketplace listings adopt batch mode; third-party batch uptake beyond Perplexity's own examples.
Links: Arav Srinivas