Perplexity, the artificial intelligence startup specializing in conversational search, has completed a new funding round of 200 million dollars, raising its valuation to 20 billion dollars (over 171 billion euros), according to sources from The Information. This development represents a new milestone in its brief yet dynamic trajectory, coming only two months after it had raised 100 million dollars.
However, neither the technology company nor official sources have confirmed the details, so there is no concrete information available regarding the investors.
This latest capital injection comes at a time when the company led by Aravind Srinivas is seeking to position itself as a true alternative to giants such as Google and OpenAI through its principal tool, the artificial intelligence-powered Comet browser.
Since its founding merely three years ago, Perplexity has raised approximately 1.5 billion dollars, according to estimates by Bloomberg. Some of these transactions were public, such as the April 2023 round in which it raised 26 million dollars to drive growth, or the 57 million euros raised at the beginning of 2024 to foster the development of its search engine. By then, the company was already valued at 520 million dollars and had received backing from prominent investors such as Jeff Bezos, Databricks Ventures, and Nvidia.
Subsequently, additional financial support arrived, the most recent of which occurred in July of this year, when the company succeeded in securing approximately 100 million dollars, elevating its valuation to 18 billion dollars.
In terms of revenue, the company has demonstrated traction: its annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeded 150 million dollars last month, and a source close to the company estimates it is now approaching 200 million dollars. This progression reinforces the narrative that the product is achieving real market adoption, beyond any media attention it has received. In fact, Perplexity ranks as the sixth most searched generative AI on the web.
Simultaneously, the company has remained active in the area of acquisitions. Firms such as Sidekick, specializing in browsers, and Carbon, a company focused on software for data ingestion by language models, have been incorporated into its structure. These integrations demonstrate an effort to build a robust technological ecosystem that supports its conversational and predictive capabilities.
The evidence speaks for itself (and what compelling evidence it is). If Perplexity’s ambition for dominance had not already been made clear, any doubts were dispelled last month, when the technology company made the surprising—and unsolicited—offer of 34.5 billion dollars to acquire Chrome, Alphabet’s web browser. This figure, which doubled its own valuation (at that time 18 billion dollars), would have allowed the startup to access over three billion active users, providing it with an immediate platform to expand its reach and competitiveness.
Although the transaction was not successful, it clearly demonstrated the company’s aggressive strategy for gaining market share. In fact, within investment circles, it is widely assumed that the offer served more as a display of strength than a genuine acquisition attempt, as Google’s rejection was considered inevitable from the outset.
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