Perplexity raises $73M Series B off reported $520M valuation for AI-powered search engine
The fundraising was led by IVP, whose portfolio also includes Coinbase and Robinhood, and joined by new investors Nvidia and Jeff Bezos.
Perplexity raises $73M Series B off reported $520M valuation for AI-powered search engine
The fundraising was led by IVP, whose portfolio also includes Coinbase and Robinhood, and joined by new investors Nvidia and Jeff Bezos.
Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity announced a series of milestones and updates on Jan. 4. Highlighting the news is the company’s Series B successful completion, which raised $73.6 million.
The fundraise was led by IVP, whose investment portfolio includes numerous crypto and fintech companies such as Coinbase and Robinhood. It was joined by Series A investors NEA, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman and Databricks. It also featured new investments
from Nvidia and Jeff Bezos (through the Bezos Expeditions Fund).
TechCrunch reported that the Series B fundraising occurred at a valuation of $520 million. According to Perplexity, it has now raised $100 million to date.
While Perplexity may be one of the lesser-known players in the search engine and generative artificial intelligence (AI) spaces, its relatively fast turnaround from inception to the reported half-a-billion-dollar evaluation (the company was founded less than two
years ago, in 2022) and the pedigree of its leadership team has caused numerous analysts to take notice.
Aravind Srinivas, the company’s CEO, previously interned at DeepMind, Google and OpenAI before working as a research scientist for OpenAI. Perplexity’s chief technology officer, Denis Yarats, worked at Facebook and Microsoft, according to their LinkedIn
