The Perplexity AI brand is seen on this photograph taken on Jan. 4, 2024.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Perplexity AI is in early talks to lift between $500 million and $1 billion in funding at an $18 billion post-money valuation, a supply acquainted with the state of affairs informed .
The new funding would double the unreal intelligence startup’s most up-to-date valuation. Perplexity has slightly below $100 million in annual recurring income, or ARR, based on the supply, who requested to stay nameless because of the confidential nature of the talks.
The AI search engine firm competes in opposition to the likes of Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Its valuation in December was $9 billion, triple its $3 billion valuation in June 2024.
Perplexity has been in the midst of the generative AI growth that started in late 2022 with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, however it faces rising competitors within the AI search market.
Earlier on Thursday, Anthropic launched its net search product, permitting its chatbot Claude to show real-time search outcomes to a subset of customers. And final fall, OpenAI launched a search characteristic inside ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positioned it to higher compete with Perplexity, in addition to main serps like Google and Microsoft’s Bing. Google has launched AI Overviews inside its search product as effectively, although it sparked controversy over high-profile errors quickly after its launch.
Bloomberg was first to report on Perplexity’s funding talks.
reported final month that Perplexity was near elevating a $50 million enterprise fund targeted on early-stage AI startups. The firm can be an anchor investor within the fund, however a lot of the capital is coming from outdoors restricted companions, based on an individual acquainted with the matter who spoke with on the time.
Perplexity sees a possible investing benefit relating to startups as a result of roughly 80,000 builders are plugged into its community, the particular person informed on the time. That provides the startup visibility into who’s utilizing its software programming interface, or API, and who’s most energetic of their consumption. Perplexity’s founders and traders are placing cash into the fund, and a few of the firm’s dedication is within the type of inventory, the supply stated.
The startup additionally made a bid in January to merge with TikTookay because the social media platform’s future within the U.S. stays in limbo.
Despite the AI growth, Perplexity has been embroiled in controversy because of accusations of plagiarizing content material from media retailers. Perplexity debuted a revenue-sharing mannequin for publishers in July. Any time a consumer asks a query and Perplexity generates advert income from citing an article in its reply, Perplexity will share a share of that income with the writer, the corporate stated on the time.
WATCH: How to make DeepSeek and TikTookay American: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas explains
