# Perplexity AI Funding Round

Perplexity AI, an American AI search company, raised $500 million in a June 2025 funding round, lifting its valuation to $14 billion. The round followed earlier funding that valued the company at over $1 billion by April 2024.

Perplexity AI, Inc., a privately held American software company, provides an AI-powered web search engine that generates synthesized answers with cited sources. Founded in August 2022, the company rapidly expanded its product portfolio and attracted significant venture capital. In June 2025, Perplexity closed a $500 million funding round, elevating its valuation to $14 billion, as part of a growth trajectory that later reached $20 billion by September 2025.

Perplexity's search engine utilizes [large language models](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/large-language-model) and real-time web search to deliver responses with source citations. It offers a free public version and a paid Pro subscription with advanced models and features. The company has expanded into mobile apps, an AI browser, a shopping hub, and enterprise tools.

## Funding History

Perplexity was founded in August 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, who came from backgrounds in engineering and [AI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence). After launching its search engine on December 7, 2022, the company attracted significant investor interest. By February 2023, it reported two million unique visitors, and an early funding round included backing from venture capital firms and angel investors.

By April 2024, Perplexity had raised $165 million in total funding, which valued the company at over $1 billion, giving it a unicorn status. Notable investors included Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder), Tobias Lütke (Shopify CEO), Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), Nvidia, and Databricks. Later, 1789 Capital, a venture firm linked to Donald Trump Jr., also participated.

In June 2025, Perplexity closed a US$500 million funding round, significantly increasing its valuation to $14 billion. This round underscored rapid user growth and strengthened its position in the growing AI search market. By September 2025, the company's valuation had reached it to $20 billion, according to public reports.

At the BloomBerry Tech Summit 2025, co-founder Srinivas reported that Perplexity processed 780 million queries in May 2025, 30 million daily queries, and monthly growth exceeding 20%. The company continued to expand its financial needs, securing a US$750 million three-year commitment from [Microsoft Azure](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/microsoft) in January 2026 to ensure GPU capacity.

## Search Technology


Perplexity's core search engine relies on instructions and responses to synthesize results from web sources. The underlying technology uses multiple [LLMs](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/large-language-model), including its customized models and those from partners. In 2024, Perplexity launched the model-agnostic approach, allowing users to select backend models such as GPT-4.5 (via [OpenAI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/openai)) and Claude 4.5 (via [Anthropic](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/anthropic)) for its Pro subscription.

The company also developed and deployed its own models: Sonar (based on Meta's Llama 3.3) and R1 1776 (based on DeepSeek R1). These LLMs process natural-language queries, extract relevant data, and generate structured answers in real time, a technique known as generative search.

Perplexity's infrastructure relies on high-performance hardware, including advanced GPUs from [nvidia](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/nvidia) and other providers, to perform AI inference at scale. In 2026, it committed to Azure for GPU capacity to support its growing query demand.

## Search Features


Perplexity's primary product is its search engine, which offers natural-language chat-style interaction but with more a search-engine feel. It includes a freemium model: the free tier provides up to 5 (or some) queries per four hours, and the Pro plan (US$20 per month) unlocks premium models, priority access, file upload, and API credits.

The platform supports [retrieval-augmented-generation](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/retrieval-augmented-generation) concepts by combining LLM with live web data and cited sources. Its search function does not require registration for basic use, but advanced features such as search history and customization are tied to the user account.

## Enterprise and Pro Services

Perplexity offers two paid tiers: Pro (self-serve) and Enterprise Pro (Teams/Organization). Pro features include file uploads (PDF, Word, Excel, etc.), choosing between models (GPT-4.5, Claude 4.5, Gemini 1.5 Pro), and an API key. Enterprise Pro adds advanced SSO/SAML, sharing controls, and admin dashboard. Internal Knowledge Search lets users upload up to 500 files for simultaneous web and internal document queries.

Launched in 2024, the Search API allows developers to call Perplexity's infrastructure programmatically, with instructions for simple access. Perplexity has announced to enhance its API documentation and usage metrics.

## Assistant Launch

January 2025, Perplexity launched **Perplexity Assistant**, an AI agent integrated into the Android app (and iOS later), which supports multimodal task completion: detecting items through the camera, playing music, and hailing rides. It designed to maintain context across interactions, improving productivity. Perplexity's agent features evolved into a memory feature and later into a dedicated browser called **Comet**.

## Browser: Comet

In July 2025, Perplexity introduced **Comet**, a Chrome-based web browser with a built-in AI assistant. Comet allowed users to ask questions directly from the address bar, and summaries and insights appear on web pages. Initially limited to the most expensive subscription tier, Comet was later released for free in October 2025, expanding its audience.

## Advertising and Revenue Shift

In July 2024, Perplexity launched a publishers' program that shares advertising revenue with content partners. However, in February 2026, Perplexity has announced it would discontinue its AI-integrated advertising strategy, replacing it with a strict subscription-first model. According to product leadership, this change was made to prioritize, an essential to preserve user trust in the 'answer engine'. (See related.

## Funding Rounds


**Round 3 (June 2025)** – $500 million

- *Amount*: US$500 million
- *Valuation*: US$14 billion
- *Investors*: Nvidia, Databricks, and angel investors (including prior)

**Prior rounds:**

- **February 2023**: Undisclosed series A - - - funded by with reported 2M users.
- **February 2024**: $165 million raised, valuing Perplexity at over US$1 billion (likely Series B)
- **June 2025**: Series D-7: $500 million at $14 billion, led by new MC, Nvidia, Databricks, with individuals
- **Series E (July 2025)**: Valuation to $20 billion (reported September 2025)
- **January 2026**: Series F (E-6) at US$21.21 billion valuation, along Azure comitted

## Financial Products

In October 2024, Perplexity launched finance tools with real-time stock tickets and earnings, based on data from Financial Modeling Prep. These features provide peer comparisons, charts, and basic analysis, integrating into its AI with data to a wider user experience.

## Corporate and Legal Notes

Perplexity has faced intellectual property claims from BBC, Dow Jones, and The New York Times over content use, as well as allegedly used webcrawlers called (Unocumented) to scrape blocked sites. The company has emphasized its licensing partners and publishers' revenue sharing as a response.

In January 2025, Perplexity submitted an unsolicited merge proposal to merge with TikTok US, just before the U.S. ban, but which ultimately did not proceed. In August 2025, it offered a $34.5 billion bid to purchase the Chrome browser from Google as part of Google's antitrust remedy.

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Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/perplexity-2024-funding-round
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Last updated: 2026-09-09T02:02:44.763214+00:00