Pursuing $500 Million in New Investments
Perplexity's Valuation Soars to $14 Billion Amid AI Search Boom
Artificial intelligence (AI) search startup Perplexity is in talks to raise a new funding round, with its valuation reaching $14 billion (approximately 19.775 trillion won), according to reports from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and others on May 12 (local time). This marks an increase of about 56% in just six months.
According to sources, the negotiations are in their final stages, and Perplexity is expected to raise about $500 million in investments. Venture capital firm Accel is leading this round.
Perplexity was previously valued at $9 billion during its fourth funding round in December of last year. Sources said that the company initially aimed to raise additional investment at an $18 billion valuation this time, but concerns were raised among investors.
WSJ assessed that this fundraising reflects strong investor interest in AI companies that are challenging the dominance of Google, which controls 90% of the global online search market.
Perplexity provides an AI-based search tool that offers summarized answers using information collected from the web. While traditional search engines like Google have provided only links, Perplexity delivers both source links and answers in sentence form. The company also plans to launch its own web browser called Comet, which will compete with existing browsers such as Google Chrome and Apple Safari.
Perplexity's annual recurring revenue (ARR) from subscription services and other sources is reported to be around $100 million.
Competition in the search market has intensified recently with the emergence of generative AI. Eddy Cue, head of Apple's services division, testified in the recent Google antitrust trial that Google searches conducted through the Safari web browser had declined for the first time in over 20 years during the past two months. He cited generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity as the reasons. He also revealed that Apple had discussed adding AI search features to Safari in partnership with Perplexity, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Perplexity counts Nvidia, New Enterprise Associates, IVP, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 among its investors. Tech industry giants such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy have also invested in Perplexity.
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