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

Right this moment, California-based Perplexity AI, the year-old startup trying to reinvent data 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 provide?

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

The startup gives a data search platform that mixes net indexes with a spread of AI fashions to supply solutions to each query a person might have. The expertise is fully conversational, the place there’s simply the data required and no must click on on totally different hyperlinks (together with advertisements/sponsored posts), evaluate solutions or endlessly dig for info. 

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

“In an period the place misinformation and AI hallucinations are inflicting rising concern, we’re constructed on the concept accuracy and transparency are stipulations to creating AI-powered search ubiquitous. The occasions of sifting via web optimization spam, sponsored hyperlinks, and a number of net pages can be changed by a way more environment friendly method to devour and share info, 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 submit.

The corporate gives 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 power to decide on the mannequin of selection, 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 help for Perplexity Copilot, the interactive analysis assistant of the corporate.

“Copilot tailors search queries with customized follow-up questions, introducing the idea of generative person 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 allows customers to realize extra related and complete solutions than different AI chatbots, conventional search engines like google, or analysis instruments,” Srinivas added.

Vital development however challenges stay

Perplexity launched its search engine a yr in the past and already claims to have gained vital traction with 10 million month-to-month lively customers and over one million cell customers.

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

Regardless that it is a nice begin for the corporate, it’s crucial to notice that it’s nonetheless far off from its core mission “to serve your entire planet’s unbounded curiosity”.

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

It will likely 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 data discovery within the age of AI.