Perplexity AI Raises $73.6M Funding to Develop AI-Integrated Search Engine
In Brief
Perplexity AI raised $73.6 million led by IVP, Databricks and Bessemer Venture Partners to advance its AI-native search engine development.
Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Perplexity AI concluded a $73.6 million Series B funding round, led by IVP, NEA, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, Databricks and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Nvidia and Jeff Bezos through the Bezos Adventure Fund. The company plans to use the new funding to expand its workforce, aiming for 60 employees by year-end, and to advance product development.
Perplexity’s search tools will facilitate users in obtaining immediate responses to queries with accompanying sources and citations. The system is driven by a diverse range of large language models (LLMs), capable of summarizing and generating information, encompassing models from OpenAI to Meta’s open-source model, Llama.
Unlike traditional search engines, Perplexity provides a chatbot-like interface enabling users to pose questions in natural language. The platform’s AI responds with a summary containing source citations, primarily from websites and articles. Users have the option to pose follow-up questions, allowing for a more in-depth exploration of a specific topic.
Established in 2019, the San Francisco-based startup was founded by chief executive officer Aravind Srinivas, who previously interned at DeepMind, Google, and OpenAI, later serving as a research scientist at OpenAI. Perplexity’s chief technology officer, Denis Yarats, has a background in working with Facebook and Microsoft.
Perplexity has now raised a total of $100 million in funding to date. The latest financing round has brought the company’s valuation to $520 million.
AI-Integrated Search Engines are Reshaping Information Landscape
Within the dynamic realm of technology, the integration of AI into search engines has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping how information is sought and accessed. Technology companies utilize AI to improve the precision, relevance, and overall user experience of search engines.
Perplexity AI reported serving over 500 million queries in 2023 with a modest marketing expenditure. In December, its website and mobile web witnessed 45 million visits, an increase from the 2.2 million recorded when the service debuted in December 2022.
Microsoft, as the supporter of OpenAI, has also undertaken AI integration into its Bing search engine over the past year. However, it struggled to take major market share from Google’s, who is dominating the market.
In addition to the well-known contenders, the emerging search engine startup You.com also provides comparable AI-driven summarization and source-citing tools. These tools are optionally powered by GPT-4, offering users an advanced experience in information search.
The Perplexity AI recent success in a new funding round marks a significant milestone for the startup, highlighting its leading position in continued evolution and innovation in the field of AI-integrated search engines.
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Alisa is a reporter for the Metaverse Post. She focuses on investments, AI, metaverse, and everything related to Web3. Alisa has a degree in Business of Art and expertise in Art & Tech. She has developed her passion for journalism through writing for VCs, notable crypto projects, and scientific writing. You can contact her at alisa@mpost.io
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Alisa is a reporter for the Metaverse Post. She focuses on investments, AI, metaverse, and everything related to Web3. Alisa has a degree in Business of Art and expertise in Art & Tech. She has developed her passion for journalism through writing for VCs, notable crypto projects, and scientific writing. You can contact her at alisa@mpost.io
