New York: Amazon titan Jeff Bezos has placed a significant wager on Perplexity AI, a burgeoning startup poised to challenge the search behemoth Google. Originally valued at approximately $520 million during its funding round, Perplexity AI is now on the cusp of finalizing a new funding deal, potentially catapulting its valuation to around $1 billion, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing informed sources. This meteoric rise indicates a near doubling of Bezos’ investment in just a short span, coinciding with Perplexity AI’s milestone achievement of amassing 10 million monthly active users.
In a statement to Fortune, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas emphasized the audacity inherent in the startup ethos, remarking, “Startups are all about being bold. Are you building a company that has unbounded potential? That’s risky, but there’s an infinite reward if it works.” Established in August 2022, Perplexity AI is challenging Google’s dominance with its innovative AI-based search engine, described as “part chatbot and part search engine,” delivering real-time information with annotated sources for its answers.
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By January of this year, Perplexity had achieved the milestone of 10 million monthly active users and processed over half a billion queries in 2023 alone, according to its CEO. Notable backers include venture capitalists, Nvidia, and a roster of angel investors, prominently featuring Jeff Bezos. Jonathan Cohen, VP of applied research at Nvidia, lauded Perplexity’s accomplishment, stating it as “one of the few consumer AI products to reach this major milestone of 10 million MAUs,” further asserting that artificial intelligence will revolutionize information accessibility.
Perplexity AI’s Ambitious Google Rivalry
In an interview with Reuters, the company’s CEO envisioned a future where Google becomes antiquated, while Perplexity emerges as the vanguard of innovation, asserting, “Google is going to be viewed as something that’s legacy and old, and Perplexity will be viewed as something that’s the next generation and future.”
Elaborating on the contrast with Google’s approach, he remarked to Fortune, “Our value proposition is that the free product is already so good that you can still use it without having to pay for it, but the paid product is going to be insane.” In a January announcement, he emphasized the transformative potential of Perplexity AI, heralding the end of cumbersome web searches dominated by SEO spam and sponsored links, promising a more efficient and streamlined approach to accessing and sharing information.
