Pentagon AI Official Emil Michael Sells Perplexity Stock for Up to 25 Million

Emil Michael, the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, sold his stake in Perplexity AI in June for between 5000000 and 25000000 dollars, according to financial disclosures. Michael, who previously served on Perplexity's advisory board, stepped down in early 2025 before joining the Trump administration. This sale follows another exit earlier this year, where he sold his stake in Elon Musk's xAI for between 5000000 and 25000000 dollars, achieving a gain of up to 4800%. The timing of these transactions has raised concerns, particularly as the Pentagon signed an agreement to deploy xAI's Grok on classified networks shortly after Michael received a divestiture certificate for his xAI holdings. Michael had taken a personal loan from Perplexity prior to joining the government and pledged not to profit from unvested shares, though it remains unclear if the June sale involved vested shares. The disclosures come amid Michael's role in the Pentagon's conflict with Anthropic, a competitor to Perplexity and xAI. A recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Rita Lin found that the Pentagon's blacklist of Anthropic was illegal, allowing the company to continue its operations. Meanwhile, Perplexity is negotiating a funding round with Nvidia that could value the company at over 30000000000 dollars.

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