According to a report by Bloomberg News on Thursday, Japanese technology investor SoftBank Group Corp’s Vision Fund 2 is set to invest between $10 million and $20 million in the U.S. search startup Perplexity AI, valuing the company at $3 billion. This investment is part of a larger $250 million funding round, as reported by sources familiar with the matter. The deal is not yet finalized and the terms could still change. Both SoftBank and Perplexity have not responded to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Perplexity AI’s search tools provide users with instant answers, complete with sources and citations. These tools are powered by a variety of large language models, including those from OpenAI and Meta’s open-source model Llama. Based in San Francisco, California, Perplexity AI raised $73.6 million in January from investors such as Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, valuing the company at $520 million. The company reported handling over 500 million queries in 2023 with minimal marketing expenditure.
