Perplexity’s AI search engine startup secures impressive $73.6M investment

AI search engine startup Perplexity has raised $73.6 million in a series-B funding round, led by Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and other investors. The California-based company, which is valued at $520 million, bills itself as the “world’s first fully functional conversational answer engine”. Perplexity uses its own search, indexing, and crawling techniques to extract information from the web and generate concise, conversational responses quickly to users’ questions. The search tool is powered by a range of large language models, and subscribers can choose from various options, including OpenAI’s GPT-4. Perplexity also offers additional tools, such as Copilot, to improve its AI search functionality. The company has made between $5 million to $10 million in revenues so far and may move into the advertising business in the future. It advises users to double-check information generated by its AI search, as the technology is not foolproof, but hopes that providing sources and links to the scraped information will help improve accuracy and transparency. The latest funding round was led by VC firm IVP and includes notable investors such as Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and others.