Jeff Bezos, Nvidia back AI search startup Perplexity

Now the billionaire is making another bet on the wave of artificial intelligence, in a sector that will directly take on Google. Bezos isn’t the only major tech investor, either.

Founded in August 2022, the startup known as Perplexity aims to challenge Google by offering an AI-based search engine that is “part chatbot and part search engine, offering real-time information and footnotes showing the sources of its answers,” according to its website.

When deciding to invest, Bezos was no doubt looking at the numbers, as he did in the 1990s. Perplexity, while still not profitable, has quickly grown to 10 million monthly active users while almost entirely skipping traditional marketing, according to the company. It further claims that more than a million people have installed its mobile apps on the iOS and Android platforms, and it served over half a billion queries last year.

On Thursday, San Francisco–based Perplexity announced that it has raised $73.6 million from a group of investors led by venture capital firm IVP and including Bezos, the $1.2 trillion AI chip giant Nvidia, and Shopify cofounder Tobias Lütke. 

Perplexity is “one of the few consumer AI products to reach this major milestone of 10 million MAUs,” said Jonathan Cohen, VP of Applied Research at Nvidia, in the announcement. AI will “transform how we access information,” he believes.

“Google is going to be viewed as something that’s legacy and old,” Perplexity CEO Avarind Srinivas, a former OpenAI researcher, told Reuters this week. “Perplexity will be viewed as something that’s the next generation and future.” 

$520 million valuation

Perplexity offers a Pro version for…