At this time, California-based Perplexity AI, the year-old startup trying to reinvent data discovery with an AI-native search engine, introduced it has raised $73.6 million in a collection B spherical of funding.

The funding comes from IVP with participation from NEA, Databricks, Nvidia, Bessemer Ventures and Kindred Ventures.

Notably, a number of tech visionaries additionally joined the listing of backers, together with Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos, former X VP Elad Gil, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke and Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch.

Perplexity, which has now raised a complete of $100 million at an estimated valuation of over $500 million, plans to use the capital to construct out its AI-driven search engine providing and take on heavyweights Google and Microsoft within the age of generative AI and language fashions.

What precisely does Perplexity AI have on supply?

Whereas Google and Microsoft have been within the search engine area for years — with the previous largely dominating the sport, Perplexity believes it may possibly take them on (or perhaps even dethrone them) by delivering a greater, AI-native expertise.

The startup affords a data search platform that mixes internet indexes with a variety of AI fashions to present solutions to each query a consumer might have. The expertise is completely conversational, the place there’s simply the knowledge required and no want to click on on totally different hyperlinks (together with adverts/sponsored posts), evaluate solutions or endlessly dig for info. 

To make the expertise even higher, Perplexity additionally offers customers the flexibility to delve into the small print of the knowledge supplied by browsing essentially the most related sources and citations together with the outcomes. 

“In an period the place misinformation and AI hallucinations are inflicting growing concern, we’re constructed on the concept that accuracy and transparency are stipulations to making AI-powered search ubiquitous. The instances of sifting by web optimization spam, sponsored hyperlinks, and a number of internet pages shall be changed by a way more environment friendly means to eat and share info, propelling our society into a brand new period of accelerated studying and analysis,” Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, wrote in a weblog publish.

The corporate affords a free model of the platform, the place one can seek for the knowledge they want utilizing the default mannequin of the corporate. Nonetheless, if there’s the necessity to do extra, there’s additionally a Professional model, billed at $20/month, that brings the flexibility to select the mannequin of alternative, together with GPT-4, for higher outcomes.

The paid tier additionally offers entry to Perplexity API credit to combine cutting-edge open-source LLMs into initiatives in addition to limitless querying help for Perplexity Copilot, the interactive analysis assistant of the corporate.

“Copilot tailors search queries with customized follow-up questions, introducing the idea of generative consumer interfaces. It removes the burden of immediate engineering and doesn’t require customers to ask completely phrased questions to get the solutions they search. This allows customers to achieve extra related and complete solutions than different AI chatbots, conventional serps, or analysis instruments,” Srinivas added.

Vital progress however challenges stay

Perplexity launched its search engine a 12 months in the past and already claims to have gained vital traction with 10 million month-to-month energetic customers and over one million cell customers.

The CEO famous that the platform served over half a billion queries in 2023, with its Copilot getting explicit traction from lecturers, college students, and data staff who rely on frequent analysis for his or her day-to-day wants.

Despite the fact that it is a nice begin for the corporate, it’s crucial to observe that it’s nonetheless far off from its core mission “to serve your complete planet’s unbounded curiosity”.

Google and Microsoft each have billions of customers and are already shifting to loop in generative AI into their serps. Google Search is testing its all-new Gemini mannequin, which has lowered the latency of responses by 40% for English within the U.S., whereas Microsoft Bing has tapped OpenAI’s GPT-Four for info search and DALL-E three for picture era. Each gamers, nevertheless, proceed to floor hyperlinks and adverts of their outcomes — which isn’t the case with Perplexity.

It will likely be fascinating to see how the corporate builds on its efforts – and distinctive options like mannequin flexibility – to take on these behemoths and scale to allow data discovery within the age of AI.