Perplexity is negotiating a $500 million financing at a valuation of $14 billion, which is below earlier expectations

On Monday, according to media reports, the star artificial intelligence search engine company Perplexity AI is in late-stage financing negotiations, aiming to raise $500 million at a valuation of $14 billion. This financing scale is at the lower end of Perplexity's originally planned fundraising amount. Previously, in March, media reported that during early negotiation stages, Perplexity had planned to raise between $500 million and $1 billion at a post-financing valuation of $18 billion. This round of financing will be led by the venture capital firm Accel, based in Palo Alto, California, USA. This round of financing has not yet been finalized. Media reports indicate that Perplexity's annual recurring revenue is slightly below $100 million. Since the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI at the end of 2022, which sparked a generative AI boom, Perplexity has been at the forefront of the trend. Perplexity is the AI tool most frequently used by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. With the AI boom, Perplexity's valuation has skyrocketed. In December last year, Perplexity's valuation was $9 billion, three times its valuation of $3 billion in June of last year. Perplexity is betting heavily on its upcoming AI agent browser Comet, but it is facing increasingly fierce competition in the AI search market. Currently, Perplexity AI is competing with Google and OpenAI, which is supported by Microsoft: Last fall, OpenAI launched a search feature in ChatGPT, giving it an advantage in competition with Perplexity and mainstream search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing. In March of this year, Anthropic launched a web search product that allows its chatbot Claude to show real-time search results to some users. Additionally, Google has also introduced an AI overview feature in its search products, although this feature sparked controversy shortly after its release due to several obvious errors. Last week, news of Apple's plans for a major overhaul of Safari, targeting AI search, caused a stir, leading to a sharp decline in Google's stock. Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, stated that he believes AI search providers, including OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic, will ultimately replace traditional search engines like Google. Cue also specifically mentioned that Apple has had some discussions with Perplexity. Risk Warning and Disclaimer The market has risks, and investment should be cautious. This article does not constitute personal investment advice and does not take into account the specific investment goals, financial situation, or needs of individual users. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article align with their specific circumstances. Investment based on this is at one's own risk