Perplexity recently announced milestones reinforcing the company’s increasingly dominant role in this new era of AI-native search. Since publicly launching the world’s first fully functional conversational answer engine about a year ago, the company has grown to 10 million monthly active users and served over half a billion queries last year. Over a million people have installed the company’s mobile apps on iOS and Android. This funding round was reportedly at a valuation of about $520 million.
In order to support the rapid consumer adoption and expansion plans, the company raised $73.6 million in Series B funding from trusted VC firms and prominent tech visionaries. IVP led the funding round with continued support from the Seed and Series A investors NEA, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, and Databricks, and new investors NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions Fund), Tobi Lutke, Bessemer Venture Partners, Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan, Guillermo Rauch, Austen Allred, Factorial Funds, and Kindred Ventures, among others. Building on Series A earlier this year, the company has raised $100 million to date.
Through Perplexity’s search tools, users get instant, reliable answers to any question with complete sources and citations included. And there is no need to click on different links, compare answers, or endlessly dig for information. In an era where misinformation and AI hallucinations are causing increasing concern, Perplexity is built on the idea that accuracy and transparency are prerequisites to making AI-powered search ubiquitous. The times of sifting through SEO spam, sponsored links, and multiple websites will be replaced by a much more efficient way to consume and share information, propelling society into a new era of accelerated learning and research.
Since the company’s previous funding round, Perplexity launched Copilot, a first-of-its-kind AI research assistant that has changed how the company uncovers information and learn more about new topics. And Copilot tailors search queries with custom follow-up questions, introducing the concept of generative user interfaces. It removes the burden of prompt engineering and does not require users to ask perfectly phrased questions to get the answers they seek. This enables users to gain more relevant and comprehensive answers than other AI chatbots, traditional search engines, or research tools. Copilot has seen strong traction, especially among academics, students, and knowledge workers who rely on frequent research for their day-to-day work and needs.
KEY QUOTES:
“Perplexity is intensely building a product capable of bringing the power of AI to billions. The team possesses the unique ability to uphold a grand, long-term vision while shipping product relentlessly, requirements to tackle a problem as important and fundamental as search.”
— Cack Wilhelm, General Partner, IVP, who led the round and joins Perplexity’s Board of Directors
“While there has been a lot of excitement around business-to-business and developer-related AI capabilities, AI will also transform how we access information. Perplexity is at the forefront of this shift as one of the few consumer AI products to reach this major milestone of 10 million MAUs. They will become the go-to place for trusted information, which is why I am so excited that Perplexity is NVIDIA’s first consumer investment from our corporate arm.”
— Jonathan Cohen, VP of Applied Research at NVIDIA
“It’s not just about our technology but also how people use it. We stand at the inflection point of a massive behavioral shift in how people access information online. I am excited about the potential for Perplexity to enhance our curiosity and intelligence by providing streamlined access to reliable information. We are privileged to have the support of leading investors, technologists, and, most importantly, the millions of users who have trusted us with their time and support as we fulfill this grand mission of making the planet smarter by continuing to build the fastest and most accurate platform for answering any question.”
— Aravind Srinivas, Co-founder & CEO of Perplexity
