IBL News | New York
AI search startup, San Francisco–based Perplexity.ai, which was launched in December 2022 and reached two million monthly active users in four months, announced it raised $25.6 million in series A.
The funding round was led by Peter Sonsini of New Enterprise Associates (Board member, Databricks) with participation from seed round investors Elad Gil (Founder, Color Health), Nat Friedman (Former CEO of GitHub), Jeff Dean (SVP, Google AI) and Bob Muglia (Former President of Microsoft), as well as new investors Susan Wojcicki (Former CEO of Youtube), Paul Buchheit (Creator of Gmail), Soleio (Designer of Messenger, Dropbox), and Databricks Ventures.
Analysts saw remarkable the presence of six current and former AI researchers at Google.
On its search results, the Perplexity platform offers up a new model by providing citations to every answer and allowing attribution for sources of information for verification. Recently, it released an iPhone iOS app with instant answers, cited sources, voice search, follow-up questions, and thread history.
Since its launch, Perplexity has been releasing new features to users every week.
The funding in Perplexity is one of the latest deals in the booming AI industry. Character.AI, also founded by former Googlers, recently raised $150 million. Adept, another AI startup, announced it had raised $350 million from investors including Spark Capital and General Catalyst.
Announcing Perplexity AI’s iPhone app and series A funding! Perplexity provides instant answers and cited sources on any topic, now available on iPhone. With follow-up questions, voice search, and thread history, learn and explore faster than ever before.📱https://t.co/qvWT8Zrcek pic.twitter.com/ZsVupfpK1K
— Perplexity AI (@perplexity_ai) March 28, 2023
The next iteration of Perplexity has arrived: Copilot, your interactive AI search companion. 🚀🤖 Perplexity Copilot guides your search experience with interactive inputs, leading you to a rich, personalized answer, powered by GPT-4. Try it for free at https://t.co/ut3wdOwUEd pic.twitter.com/AGrgBELOAE
— Perplexity AI (@perplexity_ai) May 18, 2023
