Opinion: What Cristiano Ronaldo’s Perplexity Investment Means For The AI Landscape

Asking Better Questions is How You Win

"Curiosity is a requirement for greatness. You win when you keep asking new questions every day."

Cristiano Ronaldo via X

Cristiano Ronaldo just announced his investment into Perplexity AI, giving it another boost in mainstream popularity and propels yet another round of celebrity ambassadorship in the world of the AI wars. 

Ronaldo's stake comes with a global brand ambassadorship and a dedicated interactive hub on the platform showcasing his career. The Portuguese footballer, worth approximately $1.4 billion, brings something Perplexity desperately needs - the awareness of just under 1 billion followers across social platforms.

Perplexity, founded in 2022 and valued at $20 billion, has been positioning itself as an AI-powered answer engine. It’s point of difference being that it is something in between a traditional chatbot like ChatGPT and a search engine like Google. It’s use case? Mainly those who are focused on research and content aggregation.  

Ronaldo's backing changes that equation.

Perplexity’s Advantage Vs ChatGPT

While ChatGPT excels at everyday “AI assistance” and conversational flow, Perplexity takes a research-first approach. It pulls real-time information from the web and cites its sources with clickable references which actually exist… 

For marketers doing competitive research, journalists fact-checking, or anyone who needs to know where information actually comes from, this distinction matters.

Ronaldo himself has been using Perplexity since at least October 2025, when he mentioned using it to prepare his acceptance speech for the Globe Prestige Award. That's not a paid endorsement line, that's genuine product-market fit.

The Credibility Play

This is where the marketing gets smart.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas positioned the partnership around Ronaldo's "relentless drive and habit of constantly studying new recovery and performance techniques." The message is evident: if the GOAT uses this to stay at the top of his game into his 40s, maybe you should too.

Ronaldo isn't a tech founder or Silicon Valley investor. He's a footballer. His expertise is performance and sustained excellence. When he backs an AI tool, he's saying: "This makes me better at what I do."

For Perplexity, that endorsement is worth more than another venture capital round.

The AI search landscape is brutal. There’s no question that Google dominates traditional search.

ChatGPT dominates conversational AI with more than 800 million monthly users. 

While Perplexity is still often widely associated with an early-adopter, specified use case, the deal with Ronaldo as a major ambassador could be able to change things for them.

With ChatGPT’s position as top dog looking shaky in this battle, the play to lock down one of the world’s biggest name brands becomes a potential ace up Perplexity’s sleeve. 

If just over 1% of his follower base try Perplexity and convert to using the software as a daily driver, the user base instantly gains 10 million new users.

This comes around to the trust that Ronaldo brings them. People recognise his name and his words have weight.

When he says that Perplexity is the tool that helps him perform at the highest level, it taps into the aspirational desires of his followers. 

In essence, to me, what Ronaldo's investment buys is something money usually can't: cultural relevance. It shifts the narrative of Perplexity from "yet another AI search tool trying to be different" to "the AI tool elite performers use to stay ahead."

Whether that moves the needle against giants of Open AI and Google remains to be seen. But Perplexity just got the world's most famous footballer to tell a billion people that asking better questions is how you win.

In the attention economy? That might be the smartest question they've asked yet.