Perplexity AI, Backed by Jeff Bezos, Aims to Double Valuation to $8 Billion in New Funding Round
Perplexity AI has launched funding negotiations, hoping to more than quadruple its valuation to $8 billion or more.
The Jeff Bezos-backed company, which was valued at $3 billion in June, is now aiming to fund around $500 million, though that figure could change, according to a person familiar with the situation who declined to be identified because the discussions are private.
Perplexity employs artificial intelligence to assist users in doing web searches using a chatbot-style interface.
Some news outlets have accused Perplexity of unauthorised site scraping and plagiarism, and The New York Times has even issued a cease-and-desist letter.
Newsng understands that this valuation will be higher than the $3 billion valuation following a previous round of financing in 2024.
The company is hoping to raise more than $500 million.
These talks are considered to be in their early stages, thus the final agreements may vary, or the negotiations may end. The startup’s valuation increased from $1 billion in April to the current levels being discussed.
These fundraising talks come after OpenAI disclosed a $6.6 billion round with a $157 billion value.
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT has blurred the boundaries between chatbot and search engine, SearchGPT marks the company’s entry into the search space.
We earlier reported that Perplexity, and voice artificial intelligence startup, SoundHound, have partnered to add Perplexity’s large language models (LLMs) to the SoundHound Chat AI voice assistant.
