Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI has begun fundraising talks during which it’s seeking to greater than double its valuation to $8 billion or extra, the Wall Road Journal reported on Sunday.
Perplexity has advised buyers it’s seeking to increase round $500 million within the new funding spherical, the Journal reported citing folks acquainted with the matter.
The Nvidia-backed synthetic intelligence (AI) firm’s estimated annualized income based mostly on current gross sales is at the moment about $50 million, the report added.
Perplexity AI declined to remark.
In October the startup stated it had obtained a “stop and desist” discover from the New York Instances demanding it to cease utilizing the newspaper’s content material for generative AI functions.
Perplexity has beforehand confronted accusations from media organizations akin to Forbes and Wired for plagiarizing their content material, however has since launched a revenue-sharing program to deal with some considerations put ahead by publishers.
Perplexity’s search instruments allow customers to get immediate solutions to questions with sources and citations. It’s powered by a wide range of giant language fashions (LLMs) that may sum up and generate data, from OpenAI to Meta’s open-source mannequin Llama.
