Perplexity AI, a San Francisco-based startup specializing in AI-powered search engines like google, lately accomplished a major Sequence B funding spherical, elevating $73.6 million.
The funding spherical was led by Institutional Enterprise Companions (IVP) and included a mixture of enterprise capitalists and tech luminaries like Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA, and others.
The profitable funding effort has introduced Perplexity AI’s complete raised capital to $100 million and boosted its valuation to $520 million.
Speedy progress
The corporate launched lower than two years in the past and has quickly grown in reputation, attracting 10 million month-to-month energetic customers and dealing with over half a billion queries in 2023 alone.
This progress is partly attributed to its distinctive strategy to go looking, which entails delivering direct solutions to queries utilizing pure language processing moderately than simply presenting an inventory of hyperlinks.
Perplexity integrates its search index with main AI fashions like Claude 2 and GPT-4 to generate summarized responses with citations, providing a conversational movement and permitting customers to ask follow-up questions.
Regardless of its spectacular progress, Perplexity AI is just not but worthwhile, producing single-digit million income yearly.
Income stream
Nonetheless, it does generate income by way of its Professional providing, which prices $20 per 30 days and unlocks superior options like upgraded AI fashions and picture technology capabilities. Nonetheless, anybody can use the core search expertise fully freed from price.
Perplexity AI’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, who has expertise working with organizations like DeepMind, Google, and OpenAI, believes that the corporate’s focus and skill to fine-tune quite a lot of top-performing AI fashions set it aside out there. He envisions Perplexity AI as a next-generation device that can redefine how folks entry info on-line.
The corporate’s entry into the search and generative AI areas aligns with the broader business pattern, as main tech firms like Google and Microsoft pivot in direction of AI-first interfaces for his or her search merchandise. The generative AI sector, which Perplexity AI is part of, is anticipated to be value as a lot as $667 billion by 2030.
Whereas Perplexity AI faces the problem of competing in a market dominated by giants like Google, its revolutionary strategy and up to date funding success place it as a possible disruptor within the subject of AI-powered search engines like google.