Perplexity AI, the search engine powered entirely by artificial intelligence, is on track to raise another $500 million. The startup does not hide its ambitions and intends to shake up Google’s monopoly in its preferred sector.
Founded by a former OpenAI and DeepMind employee
Perplexity AI was co-founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, an Indian engineer specializing in deep learning, reinforcement learning, and generative models. At only 30 years old, he already has very solid experience, having notably worked at OpenAI and DeepMind. Srinivas is now the CEO of Perplexity AI.
Powered by generative AI, the platform acts as a search engine and an assistant at the same time. She consults the web in real time to gather information, then summarizes it in clear and concise answers. It provides citations and links to the original sources, as well as a conversational interface for follow-up questions and in-depth exploration of certain topics.
A tripled valuation in just a few months
The startup is preparing to raise $500 million, which would bring its valuation to $9 billion, three times more than during its previous funding round in June. This fundraising, fourth of the year for Perplexity, is led by the venture capital firm Venture Partners, which also holds a seat on its board of directors.
The operation reflects investors’ keen enthusiasm for generative AI, and makes Perplexity AI one of the most promising young companies in the sector.
Jeff Bezos bet on Perplexity AI
The model proposed by the company attracts not only venture capitalists, but also well-established players in the technology industry. This is particularly the case of Jeff Bezos, who invested in Perplexity AI in January 2024.
Other big names have supported it, like the chip giant NVIDIA, the cloud specialist Databricks and Yann Le Cun, an eminent researcher in the field of AI who is now scientific director at Meta.
The platform is based on several language models
Perplexity has developed its own large language models (LLM) to power its search engine: Sonar Large and Sonar Huge. They are based on Llama 3, Meta’s open source model, and then refined by the startup using its own training data.
Additionally, the platform leverages some of the most popular LLMs currently, namely GPT-4, Claude 3.5, Mistral Large, Llama 3 and Grok-2.
A paid version
If Perplexity AI is available for free, a paid subscription of $20 per month is also offered. It guarantees 500 daily pro searches, a feature that offers advanced options like multi-step reasoning to answer complex queries, analyzing search results and launching additional searches based on previous findings.
The subscription also offers access to the most powerful LLMs on the market, as well as easy access to technical support. Perplexity also markets its API to businesses.
Innovative features
The platform offers a Discover tab specifically adapted to the user, and also allows them to create their own space dedicated to a theme. This can be shared, which can be particularly useful for research groups, for example. It is also possible to indicate specific sources that the AI must consult for its research. Additionally, Perplexity AI is able to analyze images, PDFs and texts.
Controversies with several media
Like other artificial intelligence startups, Perplexity AI has attracted the ire of several major American media outlets. Starting with Forbes who criticized him, last June, for sharing extracts from his articles without citing them. THE New York Times also stepped up to the plate, sending a letter to the startup urging it to no longer use its content in its search results.
More recently, it is Dow Jones, the parent company of Wall Street Journall, and the New York Post who took action. They filed a complaint against the platform for the use of their articles, denouncing an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists. For its part, the company has indicated that it is considering entering into commercial agreements “ mutually beneficial » with the media.
Live monitoring of the presidential elections
This November 5, 2024, Perplexity AI deployed a center specially dedicated to the American elections, making it possible to follow the progress of the vote live. While this is not surprising for a search engine, Google having launched the same functionality, we must not forget that the platform is entirely powered by AI.
However, generative artificial intelligence sometimes has a tendency to hallucinate, and therefore to claim that false information is true. Perplexity is the only AI platform to have offered such a tool, demonstrating its ambition to compete with well-established search engines.
Perplexity operates in a highly competitive, rapidly changing sector
And it won’t be an easy task. Because in addition to having to compete with a behemoth like Google, Perplexity AI must also compete with other newcomers like SearchGPT, the brand new platform from OpenAI. Historical players are also incorporating artificial intelligence into their solutions, making the market even more competitive.
