Perplexity AI is an AI-chatbot-powered research and conversational search engine that answers queries using natural language predictive text.[2][3] Launched in 2022, Perplexity generates answers using the sources from the web and cites links within the text response.[4] Perplexity works on a freemium model; the free product uses its Perplexity model based on OpenAI's GPT-3.5 model combined with the company's standalone large language model (LLM) that incorporates natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, while the paid version Perplexity Pro has access to GPT-4, Claude 3, Mistral Large, Llama 3 and an Experimental Perplexity Model.[3][4][1] It has garnered about 10 million monthly users.[5]
 | |
| Industry | Artificial intelligence |
|---|---|
| Genre | Search engine |
| Founded | August 2022 |
| Founder | Andy Konwinski, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Aravind Srinivas |
| Headquarters | , USA |
Key people | Aravind Srinivas (CEO) |
Number of employees | 55[1] (2024) |
| Website | www |
History edit
Perplexity was founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinski, engineers with backgrounds in back-end systems, AI and machine learning. Yarats, the CTO, was an AI research scientist at Meta, while Srinivas, the CEO, worked at OpenAI as an AI researcher. Ho, the Chief Strategy Officer, worked as an engineer at Quora, then a quantitative trader on Wall Street, and Konwinski was among the founding team at Databricks.[6]
Funding edit
| Series | Date | Amount (million $) | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | March 2023 | 25.6[7] | New Enterprise Associates |
| B | January 2024 | 73.6[4] | Institutional Venture Partners |
| B1 | April 2024 | 62.7[1] | Daniel Gross (entrepreneur) |
As of 2024, Perplexity has raised $165 million in funding, valuing the company at over $1 billion.[1] Additional investors include Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Databricks, Bessemer Venture Partners, Susan Wojcicki, Jeff Dean, Yann LeCun, Andrej Karpathy, Nat Friedman, Garry Tan and others.[5][7][1]
Functionality edit
Perplexity's main product is its search engine, which relies on natural language processing.[5] It interprets the context of the user queries to provide a personalised search result. Perplexity summarises the search results and gives a text with inline citations.[5] It prioritises newer sources to avoid outdated information, and allows users to ask follow-up questions that are interpreted in the same context.
Perplexity uses a freemium model and provides basic search functionalities and all search modes for free. The 'Focus' mode feature allows users to fine tune search and streamline sources. Offered focus modes include:[8]
- All: Searches the entire internet for answers.
- Academic: Focuses on scholarly articles and academic publications.
- Writing: Assists with text and code generation without internet access.
- Wolfram Alpha: Performs computational queries, including mathematical calculations.
- YouTube: Searches within YouTube, providing timestamps and in-platform video viewing.
- Reddit: Explores community discussions and opinions on Reddit.
Perplexity's paid variant, the "Pro" mode, asks the user clarifying questions to refine queries. It enables users to upload and analyse local files, including images, alongside generating images using AI. Additionally, it provides access to an API.[5][9] Perplexity launched a new enterprise version of its product in April 2024.[1]
References edit
- ^ a b c d e f Ghaffary, Shirin (2024-04-23). "AI Search Startup Perplexity Valued at $1 Billion in Funding Round". Bloomberg.
- ^ Shrivastava, Rashi (April 11, 2024). "'Like Wikipedia And ChatGPT Had A Kid': Inside The Buzzy AI Startup Coming For Google's Lunch". Forbes.
- ^ a b "TNB Tech Minute: Startup Perplexity Challenges Google With AI Search - Tech News Briefing - WSJ Podcasts". WSJ. Retrieved 2024-01-10.
- ^ a b c Singh, Shubham (2024-01-06). "Perplexity AI raises $73.6M in funding round led by Nvidia, Bezos, now valued at $522M". Business Today. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
- ^ a b c d e Wiggers, Kyle (2024-01-04). "AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI, now valued at $520M, raises $73.6M". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2024-01-07.
- ^ "AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI lands $26M, launches iOS app". TechCrunch. 2023-04-04.
- ^ a b "Announcing our series A funding round and mobile app launch". Perplexity.ai. 2023-04-28.
- ^ ""What is Search Focus?"". Perplexity.ai.
- ^ Team, AI (October 4, 2023). "Introducing pplx-api". perplexity.ai. Archived from the original on March 11, 2024. Retrieved March 27, 2024.
External links edit
