Perplexity AI, a San Francisco, California-based AI-chat-based conversational search engine, has raised $73.6 million in a Series B funding round valued at $520 million post-money.
SaaS Investors
The round was led by IVP, with participation from NEA, Databricks Ventures, former Twitter VP Elad Gil, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch. Other participants in the round included Nvidia and — notably — Jeff Bezos.
Founded in 1980, IVP is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with additional offices in London and San Francisco. The firm prefers to invest in the media, insurance, software, cloud, manufacturing, industrials, cybersecurity, consumer, enterprise, and SaaS sectors.
Perplexity Use of Funds
The company plans to use the funds to expand its team and build new product functionality.
About Perplexity AI
Perplexity AI was founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski on the belief that searching for information should be a straightforward, efficient experience, free from the influence of advertising-driven models. Perplexity offers a chatbot-like interface that allows users to ask questions in natural language, and its AI responds with a summary containing source citations. The company's platform allows to building of safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence and provides an open-source environment that is readily available to the public, enabling clients to easily develop skills and obtain knowledge in software development.
Funding Details
Company: Perplexity AI, Inc.
Raised: $73.6M
Round: Series B
Funding Month: January 2024
Lead Investors: IVP
Additional Investors: NEA, Databricks Ventures, Tobi Lutke, Nat Friedman, Guillermo Rauch, Nvidia and Jeff Bezos
Company Website: https://www.perplexity.ai/
Software Category: Conversational AI
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/04/ai-powered-search-engine-perplexity-ai-now-valued-at-520m-raises-70m/