Perplexity.ai, known for its generative AI search engine, has secured $62.7 million in its latest funding round, propelling its valuation to approximately $1 billion—nearly twice its value in January 2024.
Daniel Gross, the former leader of Y Combinator’s AI division, spearheaded the investment initiative. The round saw participation from new backers such as Stanley Druckenmiller, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, Figma CEO Dylan Field, and Brad Gerstner, the founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital. Moreover, several previous investors, including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Tobi Lutke, and IVP, have renewed and increased their financial commitments.
Perplexity previously raised $70 million in January through a round led by IVP.
Perplexity.ai intends to leverage the fresh capital to fuel its expansion worldwide. The company has formed alliances with Japan’s SoftBank Corp. and Deutsche Telekom, aiming to promote its AI solutions to both individual customers and businesses globally.
Additionally, Perplexity.ai is rolling out Enterprise Pro, a new service crafted to enhance security and management. This offering is targeted at improving the precision and efficiency of search functions within the workplace.
As for its other premium tiers, such as Perplexity Pro, the startup offers a suite of premium features such as voice input, unlimited file uploads, and search queries. It also grants access to several advanced language models such as GPT-4 and Claude 3.
However, the newly introduced Enterprise Pro takes it one step further with additional features such as enhanced data privacy, improved security, user management, SOC2 certification, data storage, and single sign-on (SSO).
Companies including Zoom, Stripe, Bridgewater, and Snowflake are already using Perplexity’s new Enterprise Pro for $40 a month. There is also a yearly subscription for $400 per year, which saves two months of subscription cost.
Perplexity AI’s search engine stands out from rival offerings for not only providing citations in its results but also multimedia answers such as charts, videos, and images to make all the data easier to understand. The generative AI tool is able to search the web in real time. The company is focused on transforming internet search through the use of generative AI.
