Synthetic intelligence (AI) search firm Perplexity is reportedly wanting to elevate about $500 million in a brand new funding spherical that may worth it at $8 billion.
The corporate has talked about these figures in talks with buyers, although the phrases may change and the funding may not come collectively, The Wall Avenue Journal (WSJ) reported Sunday (Oct. 20), citing unnamed sources.
Perplexity didn’t instantly reply to PYMNTS’ request for remark.
The reported potential funding spherical can be the corporate’s fourth in a yr and would greater than double its valuation, in accordance to the report. It was valued at $520 million in January and $3 billion this summer season.
Perplexity’s annualized income is about $50 million, up from $10 million in March, the report mentioned, citing the unnamed sources.
It was reported Oct. 2 that OpenAI almost doubled its valuation, reaching $157 billion, whereas elevating $6.6 billion in new funding. OpenAI was beforehand valued at $86 billion earlier this yr after workers offered shares.
In September, a 3-month-old AI startup raised $1 billion in a funding spherical. The funding spherical of Safe Superintelligence (SSI), co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, noticed participation from NFDG, a enterprise capital agency run by Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, alongside tech funding heavyweights Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST World and SV Angel.
Perplexity has been making waves within the search engine market with its method wherein its search instruments present customers with on the spot solutions to questions, sources and citations, PYMNTS reported in June.
The corporate makes use of varied giant language fashions (LLMs), together with these from OpenAI and Meta’s open-source Llama, to summarize and generate data. It reported over 500 million queries served in 2023, achieved with minimal advertising and marketing expenditure.
It was reported in August that Perplexity was getting ready to monetize its platform by way of advertisements, a transfer that may reshape competitors within the digital ad market.
The corporate has additionally confronted controversy, with some main media shops accusing it of plagiarism, elevating questions on content material possession and honest use within the AI period. Perplexity adjusted its quotation practices and launched a revenue-sharing mannequin for publishers.
