Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, became one of the sponsors of the company, which is not yet two years old.
The entrepreneur has invested $74 million in the startup Perplexity, which specializes in Internet search. The relevant information was published by the media last Thursday, January 4. A group of venture capitalists also invested in the startup. Perplexity is currently valued at $520 million.
The media also reports that Amazon, which is still headed by Jeff Bezos, has provided funding for several billion dollars to the startup Anthropic, which operates in the sphere of artificial intelligence.
Perplexity aims to compete with Google. Many companies have tried to challenge the tech giant, but those efforts have failed. The media, citing the founders of Perplexity, report that this startup has the advantage of using artificial intelligence to provide direct answers to user requests. The company is convinced that this functional solution is better than links to websites offered to consumers in response to their information needs.
Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, stated that if there is an opportunity to answer the question, no one needs links.
The founders of the startup say that they have almost not invested in standard marketing campaigns. According to them, in the context of solving these tasks, the emphasis was placed on the dissemination of information in the user environment and work on social networks. Preliminary results indicate that this startup marketing strategy is effective. The Perplexity website and mobile apps recorded 53 million visits in November. The service was launched in December 2022. According to the results of the first month of operation, 2.2 million visits were recorded.
The media reports that Perplexity serves millions of users while Google’s customer base is billions of people. At the same time, the startup has gained recognition among technical workers who are interested in interacting with new services using generative artificial intelligence.
Perplexity is based in San Francisco. Last March, the company raised $25.6 million under the leadership of NEA. Last year, the firm served more than 500 million user requests.
Experts say that the integration of AI into business processes does not differ significantly from the process of implementing any other enterprise-level software or modernization. In this case, at the initial stage, it is necessary to determine the purpose of using artificial intelligence. It is also important that AI tools should be focused on solving specific tasks that have real benefits for the company.
Shaunt Sarkissian, founder and CEO of AI-ID, said that businesses should think about how to add value to their activities using artificial intelligence, and not just follow the scaled trend associated with advanced technology.
Experts have found that large language models can affect 40% of the total working time. This means that it will not be difficult for companies to find areas of activity in which artificial intelligence can be used.
As we have reported earlier, Nvidia Invests in More Than 35 AI Companies in 2023.
