AI-powered search engine Perplexity has would have closed a $500 million funding round, valuing the startup at $9 billion.
Bloomberg, citing close sources, reports that the round was led by Institutional Venture Partners and closed earlier in December. In an email to TechCrunch, a Perplexity spokesperson declined to comment.
This mammoth tranche comes as competition in AI-based research intensifies. Recently launched OpenAI Search ChatGPThis response to Perplexity. And Google is building capabilities to compete with some of Perplexity's offerings, including AI-generated summaries and answers on search results pages.
This week, The Information reported that Google is considering taking a more aggressive step, potentially creating a chatbot-like “AI mode” directly within Google Search.
Perplexity isn't resting on its laurels, even as it leads a class-action lawsuit trial for alleged copyright infringement. On Wednesday, the company completed its first acquisitiontaking over a startup, Carbon, specializing in connecting AI systems to external data sources.
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