Dmitry Shevelenko is building Perplexity’s all-purpose AI assistant

Dmitry Shevelenko believes the future of work looks less like a series of apps and more like a single assistant that you ask to do something once and then let it run. Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer overseeing product, engineering, and operations, is helping build that future through the company’s Computer platform, launched in 2026, which allows users to describe an outcome, such as a marketing campaign, an app, or a video, and the system takes it from there. It breaks the job into steps, routes them to the right models and tools, and runs workflows that can stretch on for hours or even months. Computer coordinates models like Claude, Gemini, and GPT-5, along with image and video tools, inside a contained cloud environment with its own file system and browser. Perplexity has brought that idea onto local machines with Personal Computer, designed to operate 24/7 on a dedicated device like a Mac mini. The idea is to create a kind of digital proxy that can act across your personal devices and apps, drafting emails, turning reports into slide decks, managing candidate rankings, and generally acting as a persistent, task-oriented assistant, while enhancing security by keeping personal data local. Perplexity pitches it as a more secure, auditable alternative to freewheeling AI-agent tools, with detailed logs, approval steps for sensitive actions, and a kill switch if something goes off the rails. “You’ll feel comfortable knowing that some things aren’t going to the cloud,” he says. For Shevelenko, the bet is that this kind of orchestration will slowly undo the tool shuffling that defines so much knowledge work, while positioning Perplexity as a neutral conductor that can select the best model for each subtask rather than forcing one model to handle everything. Outside the office, he has used similar tools to build a word-of-the-day app for his 11-year-old, framing vocabulary words around her interests, like tennis, so practice feels more like play than homework. That personal example fits within how Perplexity talks about Computer more broadly: as a layer that handles the scaffolding so people can focus on the parts of their jobs and lives that still feel like creativity and connection. This profile is part of Fast Company’s AI 20 for 2026, our roundup spotlighting 20 of AI’s most influential technologists, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, and creative thinkers. The extended deadline for Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Thursday, June 18, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.