As AI-driven search technology evolves, Perplexity—a startup founded from the ground up—is capitalizing on this trend. Today, the company, led by Aravind Srinivas, announced a successful funding round, raising an additional $62.7 million, spearheaded by Y Combinator’s former head of AI, Daniel Gross. This funding has doubled its valuation to over $1 billion, following a previous $74 million raised in a Series B round just months ago.
While AI companies becoming unicorns is increasingly common, Perplexity's rapid success in the competitive search space, typically dominated by Google, is noteworthy. The startup is set to expand globally, forming new partnerships in Japan and Germany. Additionally, it has introduced an Enterprise Pro plan aimed at organizations that seek to integrate AI-driven knowledge discovery into their operations.
In a recent blog post, Perplexity highlighted that major enterprises like Zoom, HP, and Databricks are already utilizing the B2B plan, saving hundreds of hours in productivity.
What Does Perplexity Offer?
As tech giants like Google and Microsoft enhance their search platforms with AI models like Gemini and GPT-4, Perplexity distinguishes itself with a fully AI-native search experience developed from scratch. Its "knowledge discovery" platform merges web indexes with various AI models to deliver direct answers to users' inquiries, complete with relevant citations.
The platform features a conversational interface that presents only the information needed, eliminating the hassle of navigating multiple links or sifting through ads and sponsored content. This focus on simplicity is key to Perplexity's appeal; since launching the product—including a paid tier at $20 per month—the company reports rapid growth, handling 169 million queries monthly.
With new funding, Perplexity aims to enhance its offerings and reach a larger user base, starting with the Enterprise Pro plan.
Srinivas explained in a post that enterprise users faced limitations due to data and security concerns. The new Enterprise Pro plan addresses these issues with SOC2 certification, enhanced privacy, and security measures such as secure single sign-on, user management, notifications for new file uploads, and 7-day query deletion.
Available at $40 per month or $400 annually per seat, this plan ensures user data is not utilized for training the large language models that power the platform.
While the enterprise tier has just been introduced, select organizations, including Stripe, Zoom, Bridgewater, Snowflake, and several others, have been given early access to test secure AI-driven search within their workflows. Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi noted that this tier has significantly accelerated R&D, saving the company approximately 5,000 work hours monthly.
Global Expansion Underway
The introduction of the enterprise plan is part of Perplexity's broader goal to scale its product internationally. The startup has partnered with Japan's SoftBank Corp. and Germany's Deutsche Telekom to effectively market and sell its AI search solution to consumers and businesses in these markets.
With a combined user base exceeding 335 million across mobile and broadband services, these collaborations will significantly enhance Perplexity's reach.
Clearly, Perplexity is committed to its AI-native search product's growth, making it intriguing to see how competitors like Google and Microsoft will evolve their generative AI search technologies in response to this new industry player.
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