Athira Sethu
Kochi, 21 October 2024
Perplexity AI, a Jeff Bezos-backed startup, is holding preliminary talks for raising about $500 million at around $8 billion valuation, which if materialised will be more than double its current valuation of about $3 billion. That’s according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Perplexity AI now earns an estimated annual revenue of around $50 million, as computed from recent sales. The company did not comment on these fundraising efforts, the report said.
Last week, Perplexity was given a “cease and desist” letter by the New York Times demanding that the former stop using the latter’s content as material for producing responses in its AI model. Perplexity has gotten itself into another controversy as it has been accused of stealing content from other media organizations, like Forbes and Wired. As a move to address this, the company began a revenue-sharing program with publishers on some of these concerns.
Perplexity AI is a search tool that gives users the prompt answers to their questions, sources with citations. This search tool uses multiple large language models, including OpenAI and Meta’s Llama, in creating information and summaries.
As interest keeps pouring in from investors, Perplexity will now look to raise much more than its valuation in June at $3 billion. The firm is positioning itself to compete with Google in the AI search market. This year started with the firm valued at about $500 million, three funding rounds since January have seen it benefit from growing excitement for generative AI technologies.
Despite all the fanfare of AI, things have been tough since the plagiarism allegations. It says that the New York Times and other media outlets are scraping its content so it can answer questions. The company denies these allegations but still grapples with the mess of the evolving AI landscape.
The company continues moving ahead by focusing on its goal of raising funds with a determination to put behind it all the controversies engulfing it.
