Quora Secures $75M Funding from a16z to Expand Poe, Its AI Chatbot Platform

Quora is making headlines again, raising funding for the first time in nearly seven years. The popular question-and-answer platform secured $75 million from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to accelerate the growth of Poe, Quora’s innovative AI chat platform.

So, what sets Quora’s AI chatbots apart from the competition? Quora aims to establish a unique niche within the creator economy focused on AI chatbots. Instead of traditional revenue models reliant on YouTube ads, creators can now monetize their talents by developing engaging AI bots.

“Our expectation is that the majority of this funding will be allocated to support bot creators on the platform through our newly launched creator monetization program,” stated Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo.

In October, Quora introduced this monetization program for Poe, enabling users who create bots or prompts to earn revenue. This initiative also extends to developers who integrate bots with the Poe AI, creating multiple earning opportunities.

Quora is making a significant investment in creators, and with this funding boost, the company can attract skilled developers to Poe with the prospect of substantial financial rewards. Moreover, Poe offers a rich array of text and image AI models, including ChatGPT, DALL-E 3, Claude 2, Stable Diffusion, and Llama, providing creators with a diverse toolkit for innovation.

When Quora last secured venture capital in 2017, it carried a valuation of approximately $1.8 billion. However, following this recent round of funding, Quora's valuation has dropped to around $500 million, reflecting a considerable decline.

“In the past two years, the market landscape has shifted dramatically, influenced by rising interest rates and increased capital costs,” D’Angelo explained. “As a result, our valuation is below its previous high, but we welcome this adjustment with the current market conditions.”

Despite this downturn, Quora's Poe is gaining momentum, with D’Angelo reporting that the platform experienced its highest usage week ever recently, boasting over 400 million monthly unique visitors.

“Excluding Poe, Quora is cash flow positive, meaning all of this new funding is earmarked exclusively for Poe,” D’Angelo noted.

According to data accessed from Apptopia in October, Poe's mobile app saw more than 250,000 downloads in its debut month of February. By October, it had gathered over 18.4 million installations and reached nearly 1.22 million monthly active users.

“Poe is already showing signs of increasing returns to scale,” remarked a16z partner David George in a blog post. “Poe is now among the top five largest generative AI platforms, with creators launching over 1 million bots on the site.”

Quora's Poe is paving the way for an AI chatbot creator economy.