Top Pentagon AI Official Sold Millions in Perplexity Stock, Disclosures Show

In brief

• Emil Michael, the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, sold his Perplexity AI stake in June for between $5 million and $25 million, according to financial disclosures reviewed by The Guardian.
• It's his third AI-adjacent stock exit this year — following a $24 million gain on xAI in January and at least $5 million from a stake in Brex in April.
• Michael has been the public face of the Pentagon's fight to blacklist Anthropic, a direct Perplexity and xAI rival, though a federal judge vacated that designation last week.

Emil Michael, the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and the department's chief technology officer, sold his stake in Perplexity AI in June for between $5 million and $25 million, according to financial disclosures reviewed by The Guardian.

Michael previously sat on Perplexity's advisory board, stepping down at the start of 2025 before joining the Donald Trump administration that May.

The Perplexity sale isn't Michael's first exit this year. He also held a stake in Elon Musk's xAI, reported at $500,000 to $1 million when he entered government, and sold it on January 9 for between $5 million and $25 million—a gain of up to 4,800%, according to IBTimes UK. Not bad for a rideshare executive turned defense official.