Perplexity AI raises $74M to tackle Google Search, Microsoft Bing

In the present day, California-based Perplexity AI, the year-old startup trying to reinvent information discovery with an AI-native search engine, introduced it has raised $73.6 million in a collection B spherical of funding.

The funding comes from IVP with participation from NEA, Databricks, Nvidia, Bessemer Ventures and Kindred Ventures.

Notably, a number of tech visionaries additionally joined the record of backers, together with Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos, former X VP Elad Gil, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke and Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch.

Perplexity, which has now raised a complete of $100 million at an estimated valuation of over $500 million, plans to make use of the capital to construct out its AI-driven search engine providing and tackle heavyweights Google and Microsoft within the age of generative AI and language fashions.

What precisely does Perplexity AI have on supply?

Whereas Google and Microsoft have been within the search engine house for years — with the previous largely dominating the sport, Perplexity believes it might take them on (or possibly even dethrone them) by delivering a greater, AI-native expertise.

The startup provides a information search platform that mixes net indexes with a variety of AI fashions to offer solutions to each query a consumer might have. The expertise is totally conversational, the place there’s simply the data required and no have to click on on completely different hyperlinks (together with advertisements/sponsored posts), examine solutions or endlessly dig for data. 

To make the expertise even higher, Perplexity additionally provides customers the flexibility to delve into the small print of the data offered by browsing essentially the most related sources and citations together with the outcomes. 

“In an period the place misinformation and AI hallucinations are inflicting growing concern, we’re constructed on the concept accuracy and transparency are stipulations to creating AI-powered search ubiquitous. The occasions of sifting by way of search engine marketing spam, sponsored hyperlinks, and a number of net pages will probably be changed by a way more environment friendly approach to eat and share data, propelling our society into a brand new period of accelerated studying and analysis,” Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, wrote in a weblog put up.

The corporate provides a free model of the platform, the place one can seek for the data they want utilizing the default mannequin of the corporate. Nevertheless, if there’s the necessity to do extra, there’s additionally a Professional model, billed at $20/month, that brings the flexibility to decide on the mannequin of alternative, together with GPT-4, for higher outcomes.

The paid tier additionally provides entry to Perplexity API credit to combine cutting-edge open-source LLMs into initiatives in addition to limitless querying assist for Perplexity Copilot, the interactive analysis assistant of the corporate.

“Copilot tailors search queries with customized follow-up questions, introducing the idea of generative consumer interfaces. It removes the burden of immediate engineering and doesn’t require customers to ask completely phrased inquiries to get the solutions they search. This permits customers to achieve extra related and complete solutions than different AI chatbots, conventional engines like google, or analysis instruments,” Srinivas added.

Important development however challenges stay

Perplexity launched its search engine a 12 months in the past and already claims to have gained vital traction with 10 million month-to-month lively customers and over 1,000,000 cell customers.

The CEO famous that the platform served over half a billion queries in 2023, with its Copilot getting specific traction from teachers, college students, and information employees who depend on frequent analysis for his or her day-to-day wants.

Though this can be a nice begin for the corporate, it’s crucial to notice that it’s nonetheless far off from its core mission “to serve all the planet’s unbounded curiosity”.

Google and Microsoft each have billions of customers and are already transferring to loop in generative AI into their engines like google. Google Search is testing its all-new Gemini mannequin, which has decreased the latency of responses by 40% for English within the U.S., whereas Microsoft Bing has tapped OpenAI’s GPT-4 for data search and DALL-E 3 for picture era. Each gamers, nonetheless, proceed to floor hyperlinks and advertisements of their outcomes — which isn’t the case with Perplexity.

Will probably be attention-grabbing to see how the corporate builds on its efforts – and distinctive options like mannequin flexibility – to tackle these behemoths and scale to allow information discovery within the age of AI.