OpenAI currently leads the race as the world’s most valuable startup with a $157 billion valuation. However, there are several AI companies poised to reshape the industry with increasing valuations. We recently saw AI players across sectors such as Miros, Plato, and Spot AI secure investments and investors such as Coatue close funds dedicated to back AI startups.
Reportedly, at this point in time when AI is gaining momentum across sectors, Perplexity AI, a ChatGPT rival from California is gearing up to raise $500 million. This will be the fourth fundraising by the company this year and The Wall Street Journal reports that it will value the company at $9 billion, which is much higher than the $520 million valuation at the beginning of this year.
Institutional Venture Partners, a Bay Area-based firm, will lead the new round. As of now, there is no word about the other investors contributing to this round.
Earlier this year, the company snapped $73.6 million in a Series B funding round at a valuation of $520 million from Jeff Bezos and others. This was followed by a $62.7 million funding round valuing it at $1.04 billion, making it a unicorn in the Gen AI sector.
The company’s rapid growth highlights strong investor interest in its offerings. This marks it as one of the most valuable AI startups amid a new wave of generative AI technology.
That said, here are some facts about Perplexity AI.
Experienced founders
Perplexity AI was founded by former Google researchers Arvind Srinivas, Dennis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski with engineering backgrounds in AI, distributed systems, search engines, and databases. Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity, has previous experience at OpenAI.
AI-powered search engine
Comparing Perplexity AI and ChatGPT, the latter works as a language model whereas the former integrates both ChatGPT and the Google search engine. The platform’s AI responds with summaries containing source citations such as websites and articles. Users can ask follow-up questions to delve deeper into a particular topic with Perplexity AI’s search engine.
Unlike traditional search engines, Perplexity provides a chatbot-like interface that allows users to ask questions in natural language.
Pro version: What does it offer?
The company has a freemium version of its platform where users can find information using their default model. Also, there is a paid version – Perplexity Enterprise Pro, priced at $40/month or $400/year. The company also offers a lower-cost Perplexity Pro version, at $20 per month, which unlocks access to Perplexity Copilot.
The Pro version of its search engine includes added features that provide stronger security and data protection such as team member management and deleting queries after seven days. This opens up access to voice-to-text, unlimited file uploads, unlimited search queries, personal preferences, and image generation capabilities.
The company uses the power of multiple large language models to deliver its results. It includes models developed in-house and external models such as Google’s Gemini, Mistral 7B, Anthropic’s Claude, and OpenAI’s GPT-4. What’s interesting is that Pro subscribers can select their preferred model when making conversational search queries, allowing for a customised search experience.
Election Information Hub
Catching up on the US presidential election fever, Perplexity AI introduced a new feature called Election Information Hub. Launched during the voting frenzy, this platform delivered AI-generated answers to all questions about candidates, their election policies, and local ballot initiatives.
SearchGPT vs Perplexity AI
OpenAI’s new SearchGPT prototype shares many features with the existing Search AI Perplexity AI. While OpenAI has significant resources and a widely recognised language model, the latter currently offers more advanced capabilities.
Most links from SearchGPT and Perplexity are sourced from Bing Search API. They both have their own crawlers though. With SearchGPT links after summaries hyperlink the domain name while Perplexity uses a citation style number.
Desktop app for Perplexity AI
Recently, Perplexity launched a native app for its AI-driven search service. adds a keyboard shortcut that allows you to enter a query from anywhere on your desktop. You can use the app to ask follow-up questions and carry on a conversation about what it finds.
It’s free to download and use, but Perplexity offers subscriptions for major users.
Lawsuit for copyright infringement
However, last month, two News Corp-owned publishers, including WSJ parent company Dow Jones and the New York Post filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Perplexity AI. The publishers allege that the company uses their copyrighted content to answer users’ questions. In some cases it is claimed to reproduce entire articles, diverting the traffic that would otherwise go to the publishers’ sites.
Following this claim, CEO Anand Srinivas said that Perplexity could give publishers access to chatbots that would respond to users’ queries on the publishers’ websites, using their content to provide answers.
“This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity’s brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content publishers produce,” the publishers said in their complaint, per an Oct. 21. Besides this, Perplexity AI was in the headlines for another reason. Reportedly, Microsoft is blocking its employees from accessing its search engine. They received a notification that they could not access the website without any specific information.
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