May 14 (Reuters) - Perplexity AI said on Wednesday it

had partnered with payments firm PayPal ( PYPL ) to enable

direct purchases within its chat interface.

The deal will strengthen Perplexity's agentic commerce

offering, a rapidly growing trend where AI agents not only help

consumers with shopping but also handle transactions for them.

Through the partnership, users will be able to check out

instantly with PayPal ( PYPL ) or Venmo when they ask Perplexity Pro to

find products, book travel or buy tickets, starting this summer

in the United States.

The entire process, from payment to invoicing, will occur

behind the scenes through PayPal's ( PYPL ) account linking, which could

"eliminate the need for passwords" and "streamline the

experience to a single user query or click", the AI startup

said.

The partnership will also expand Perplexity's commerce tools

to PayPal's ( PYPL ) more than 430 million active accounts across nearly

200 markets.

Perplexity provides information by searching the internet,

similar to ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, and is backed by

Amazon.com ( AMZN ) founder Jeff Bezos, AI giant Nvidia ( NVDA )

and Japan's SoftBank Group.

The startup is in advanced talks to raise $500 million in a

funding round that would value it at $14 billion, the Wall

Street Journal reported on Monday.