Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI has closed $500m funding round, boosting its valuation to $9bn, Bloomberg has reported.

Institutional venture partners led the financing round, which was completed earlier in December 2024.

In April 2024, Perplexity was valued at $1bn, and by June, it had risen to $3bn following an investment from SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund 2.

The latest $9bn valuation includes the amount raised in the recent funding round.

Founded in 2022, Perplexity provides real-time information and offers both paid and free versions of its search tool.

The company introduced several new services, including a product for searching internal files and finance-related features such as stock prices and company earnings data.

How well do you really know your competitors?

Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.

Company Profile – free sample

Thank you!

Your download email will arrive shortly

Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample

We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form

By GlobalData
Visit our Privacy Policy for more information about our services, how we may use, process and share your personal data, including information of your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. Our services are intended for corporate subscribers and you warrant that the email address submitted is your corporate email address.

In March, the company reported having more than 15 million active users.

It has also established revenue-sharing partnerships with publishers like Time and Fortune after facing plagiarism accusations.

In addition to SoftBank, Perplexity is backed by investors including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and NVIDIA.

The startup recently acquired Carbon, a data connectivity startup, to enhance its technology stack.

This acquisition will allow users to connect apps like Notion and Google Docs directly to Perplexity, the company said.

As part of the acquisition, all members of the Carbon team will join Perplexity .

In a media statement, Perplexity said: “Carbon will make it easier for Perplexity’s answer engine to be informed by diverse sources of information, whether that data resides in internal databases, cloud storage, or document repositories.

“Rather than making users search through many different web pages, apps, and messages to find the answer they’re looking for, we see a future where Perplexity does the research for you, bringing the most critical insights across sources together as part of the answer. Carbon will simplify the process for our users to connect the data sources that matter to them.”