The Rabbit R1 Harnesses Perplexity AI Technology to Provide Answers to Your Questions

One of the most impressive gadgets showcased at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the Rabbit R1, which will utilize Perplexity AI’s technology to enhance user interactions, as announced by both companies. Perplexity AI revealed that the first 100,000 customers who purchase the R1 will receive a complimentary year of Perplexity Pro.

“We’re excited to announce our collaboration with Rabbit! Together, we’re delivering real-time, accurate answers to Rabbit R1 users, powered by our innovative PPLX online LLM API, which is free from any knowledge cutoffs. Plus, the first 100,000 Rabbit R1 buyers will receive...” — Perplexity AI (@perplexity_ai), January 18, 2024.

Retailing at $200, the Rabbit R1 has garnered attention at CES as an AI-focused device designed to alleviate the need for users to pull out their smartphones for tasks like web searches, playing music on Spotify, or hailing a ride. Currently, there is no subscription fee associated with the device.

Engineered by Teenage Engineering, the Rabbit R1 features a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a push-to-talk button, a camera, a speaker, and dual microphones. So far, the company has sold 50,000 units through pre-orders. They have now opened pre-orders for their 6th production batch, which includes an additional 50,000 units. Rabbit has assured customers in the EU and UK that they will receive their devices by the end of July, even if they are ordering from the 6th batch.

The previous 5th batch of 10,000 Rabbit R1 units has sold out, and pre-orders for the new 6th batch are now live at . The expected delivery date for this batch is slated for June to July 2024.

In total, for all addresses within the EU and UK, all shipments from batches 1 through 6 are set to arrive by...

— Rabbit Inc. (@rabbit_hmi), January 19, 2024.

Perplexity AI employs a combination of its proprietary AI model and third-party models—including Google’s Gemini, Mistral 7B, Anthropic’s Claude 2.1, and OpenAI’s GPT-4—to deliver accurate web-sourced information. Their tool features a chatbot interface available on both web and mobile platforms, allowing users to ask questions in a natural dialogue format. While Perplexity AI's approach differs from conventional search engines, it competes with notable players such as Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s Copilot, and You.com in the emerging GenAI search landscape.

Earlier this month, Perplexity AI secured $73.6 million in funding, achieving a valuation of $520 million, led by IVP, with participation from NEA, Databricks Ventures, Nvidia, former Twitter VP Elad Gil, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, and Jeff Bezos.