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Perplexity AI

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the AI search engine. For the namesake measure of uncertainty in information theory, see Perplexity.

Perplexity AI
Developer(s)
Initial releaseDecember 7, 2022; 2 years ago (2022-12-07)
Engine
Type
Websiteperplexity.ai

Perplexity AI, or simply Perplexity, is an American web search engine that uses a large language model to process queries and synthesize responses based on web search results. With a conversational approach, Perplexity allows users to ask follow-up questions and receive answers with citations to its sources from the internet.[2]

Perplexity AI, Inc. was founded as a privately held company in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski. It launched its flagship search engine on December 7, 2022, and has since released a Google Chrome extension and an app for iOS and Android.[1][2][3] As of June 2025, the company was valued at US$14 billion.[4] It currently has around 700 employees,[5] and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States.[6]

A free and public version is available, but the paid Pro subscription allows users to choose from a variety of more advanced models, among other features.[1]

History

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Aravind Srinivas at the 2024 TechCrunch Disrupt
Aravind Srinivas at the 2024 TechCrunch Disrupt

In August 2022, Perplexity AI, Inc. was founded by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, engineers with backgrounds in back-end systems, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.[7]

In February 2023, Perplexity reported 2 million unique visitors.[2] By April 2024, Perplexity had raised $165 million in funding, valuing the company at over $1 billion.[8] As of June 2025, Perplexity closed a $500 million round of funding that elevated its valuation to $14 billion.[4] Investors in Perplexity AI have included Jeff Bezos, Tobias Lütke, Nat Friedman, Nvidia, and Databricks.[9][10][8] During Bloomberg’s Tech Summit 2025, Srinivas shared that the company processed 780 million queries in May 2025, experiencing more than 20% month-over-month growth, processing around 30 million queries daily.[11]

In July 2024, Perplexity announced the launch of a new publishers' program to share ad revenue with partners.[12]

On January 18, 2025, the day before the impending U.S. ban on Chinese social media app TikTok, Perplexity submitted a proposal for a merger with TikTok US.[13][14][15][16]

Services

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Screenshot of Perplexity (2025)

Perplexity works on a freemium model. It also offers a paid enterprise version.[8]

Perplexity summarizes the search results and produces text with inline citations[9] and also enables users to use Pages to generate customizable web pages and research presentations based on user prompts.[17]

The subscription-based Pro version provides access to an API[9] and also enables users to search both internal files and web content. It also has access to models like GPT-4.1, o4-mini, Claude 4.0, Grok 3 Beta and Gemini.[18] The company has also developed its own models Sonar (based on Llama 3.3)[19] and R1 1776 (based on DeepSeek R1).[20]

Shopping hub

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On November 18, 2024, Perplexity launched its shopping hub to attract users, backed by Amazon and leading AI chipmaker Nvidia. This will give users product cards showing relevant items in response to asked questions about shopping.[21]

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Internal Knowledge Search enables Pro and Enterprise Pro users to simultaneously search across web content and internal documents. Users can upload and search through Excel, Word, PDF, and other common file formats. Enterprise Pro users have a limit of 500 files for upload and indexing.[22]

Finance

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In October 2024, Perplexity AI introduced new finance-related features, including looking up stock prices and company earnings data. The tool provides real-time stock quotes and price tracking, industry peer comparisons and basic financial analysis tools. The platform sources its financial data from Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) to ensure accuracy.[23][24]

Assistant

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In January 2025, Perplexity launched the Perplexity Assistant, an AI-powered tool designed to enhance the functionality of its search engine. Since April of 2025, the assistant is available on Android and iOS devices, and is integrated into the Perplexity app. It can perform tasks across multiple apps, such as hailing a ride or searching for a song, and is capable of maintaining context across actions, allowing for more seamless task management.[3]

The Perplexity Assistant is powered by the company's search engine, granting it access to the web. This enables event reminders, including finding the right date and time and creating corresponding calendar entries. The assistant is also multi-modal, meaning it can use a phone's camera to provide answers about the user's surroundings or on-screen content.[3]

Initially, the Perplexity Assistant is free in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Korean, and Hindi. Perplexity has acknowledged that the assistant is still in development and may not always function as expected. For instance, certain features, such as summarizing unread emails or upcoming calendar events, require users to enable a workaround based on notifications.[3]

Comet

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Comet is an agentic web browser now available in beta for select Apple Silicon Mac users, with early access granted to those who signed up for the beta program. Comet aims to transform the web browsing experience by incorporating context-aware intelligence. It personalizes responses based on the user’s browsing history and open tabs. One of the browser’s standout features is the integration of Perplexity’s core search capabilities into a side panel that is accessible across all websites. This allows users to query, summarize, or explore content without having to switch between tabs, enhancing convenience and efficiency. When launching the browser, users will notice that it starts with the ability to block advertisements and trackers on the web. Comet can take commands from the user through its ‘Comet Assistant’ and close/open, group tabs, close duplicate tabs, check the shopping cart, help find unanswered emails, and more. These functions are intended to help users save significant time every week by automating routine tasks. [25]

Reception

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In June 2024, Forbes publicly criticized Perplexity for using their content. According to Forbes, Perplexity published a story largely copied from a proprietary Forbes article without mentioning or prominently citing Forbes. In response, Srinivas said that the feature had some "rough edges" and accepted feedback but maintained that Perplexity only "aggregates" rather than plagiarizes information.[26][27] In October 2024, The New York Times sent a cease-and-desist notice to Perplexity to stop accessing and using NYT content, claiming that Perplexity is violating its copyright by scraping data from its website.[28] In June 2024, Dow Jones and New York Post filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, alleging copyright infringement. The lawsuit also alleges that Perplexity attributed quotes to an article on F-16 jets for Ukraine that never appeared in the original article.[29] Perplexity released a blog post to address the lawsuits on October 24, 2024. It stated that the complaints are misleading and reiterated that it was open to revenue-sharing programs.[30] On January 31, 2025, Perplexity was sued for alleged trademark infringement by Perplexity Solved Solutions (PSS), a software firm founded in 2017.[31] The lawsuit, filed in the United States, claims that Perplexity AI's use of the name "Perplexity" violates PSS's federally registered trademark, potentially leading to consumer confusion. PSS had previously declined an offer from Perplexity AI to purchase the trademark in 2023. The legal action seeks to prevent Perplexity AI from using the name in its branding and marketing.[32]

Wired investigation

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In June 2024, separate investigations by the magazine Wired and web developer Robb Knight found that Perplexity does not respect the robots.txt standard, which allows websites to stop web crawlers from scraping content, reportedly despite Perplexity claiming the opposite. Perplexity also lists the IP address ranges and user agent strings of their web crawlers publicly, but according to Wired and Robb Knight, they use undisclosed IP addresses and spoofed user agent strings when ignoring robots.txt.[33][34] In response, Srinivas stated that Perplexity is not ignoring Robot Exclusion Protocol.[35] When asked whether Perplexity would cease scraping Wired content using third parties, Srinivas responded that "it's complicated."[35]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d "Perplexity AI". Golden. Archived from the original on August 7, 2023. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
  2. ^ a b c Wiggers, Kyle (April 5, 2023). "AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI lands $26M, launches iOS app". Techcrunch. Archived from the original on March 5, 2024. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  3. ^ a b c d Wiggers, Kyle (January 23, 2025). "Perplexity launches an assistant for Android". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on January 23, 2025. Retrieved January 24, 2025.
  4. ^ a b Ghaffary, Shirin (May 12, 2025). "AI Startup Perplexity Nears Funding at $14 Billion Value".
  5. ^ "Live Data Technologies 2025".
  6. ^ "Google's latest rival: What is Perplexity AI and why is it causing so much controversy?". October 24, 2024. Archived from the original on December 13, 2024. Retrieved December 13, 2024.
  7. ^ Peluso, Olivia (March 12, 2025). "Who Is Aravind Srinivas, the Founder and CEO Behind $9B Perplexity AI?". Observer. Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  8. ^ a b c Ghaffary, Shirin (April 23, 2024). "AI Search Startup Perplexity Valued at $1 Billion in Funding Round". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on April 24, 2024.
  9. ^ a b c Wiggers, Kyle (January 4, 2024). "AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI, now valued at $520M, raises $73.6M". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on January 7, 2024. Retrieved January 7, 2024.
  10. ^ "Announcing our series A funding round and mobile app launch". Perplexity Blog. April 28, 2023. Archived from the original on April 22, 2024. Retrieved April 24, 2024.
  11. ^ Malik, Aisha (June 5, 2025). "Perplexity received 780 million queries last month, CEO says". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  12. ^ Robison, Kylie (July 30, 2024). "Perplexity is cutting checks to publishers following plagiarism accusations". The Verge. Archived from the original on January 29, 2025. Retrieved August 4, 2024.
  13. ^ Ha, Anthony (January 18, 2025). "Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok". TechCrunch. Retrieved January 18, 2025.
  14. ^ "Perplexity AI bids to merge with TikTok US amid looming ban, source says". USA TODAY. Retrieved January 18, 2025.
  15. ^ "Perplexity AI has reportedly submitted an 11th-hour bid to save TikTok in the US". Engadget. January 18, 2025. Archived from the original on January 18, 2025. Retrieved January 18, 2025.
  16. ^ "Perplexity AI bids to merge with TikTok US, source says". CNA. Retrieved January 18, 2025.
  17. ^ David, Emilia (May 30, 2024). "Perplexity will research and write reports". The Verge. Archived from the original on June 20, 2024. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  18. ^ Singh, Shubham (January 6, 2024). "Perplexity AI raises $73.6M in funding round led by Nvidia, Bezos, now valued at $522M". Business Today. Archived from the original on August 20, 2024. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
  19. ^ "Perplexity AI launches new ultra-fast AI search model Sonar". The Decoder. February 12, 2025. Retrieved June 6, 2025.
  20. ^ Jindal, Siddharth (February 19, 2025). "Perplexity AI Open-Sources R1 1776 to Remove Censorship from DeepSeek-R1". Analytics India Magazine. Retrieved June 6, 2025.
  21. ^ "AI startup Perplexity adds shopping features as search competition tightens". Reuters. November 18, 2024. Retrieved November 21, 2024.
  22. ^ David, Emilia (October 17, 2024). "Perplexity lets you search your internal enterprise files and the web". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on December 20, 2024. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
  23. ^ "AI Startup Perplexity Closes Funding Round at $9 Billion Value". Bloomberg.com. December 18, 2024. Archived from the original on February 5, 2025. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
  24. ^ "Perplexity AI's new tool makes researching the stock market 'delightful'. Here's how". ZDNET. Archived from the original on December 19, 2024. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
  25. ^ "Perplexity's Comet Browser is Now Available in Beta". AIM. May 16, 2025.
  26. ^ O'Brien, Matt (June 15, 2024). "AI startup Perplexity wants to upend search business. News outlet Forbes says it's ripping them off". Associated Press. Archived from the original on June 20, 2024. Retrieved June 20, 2024.
  27. ^ Lane, Randall (June 11, 2024). "Why Perplexity's Cynical Theft Represents Everything That Could Go Wrong With AI". Forbes. Retrieved June 20, 2024.
  28. ^ Davis, Wes (October 15, 2024). "The New York Times warns AI search engine Perplexity to stop using its content". The Verge. Archived from the original on November 12, 2024. Retrieved October 17, 2024.
  29. ^ Bruell, Alexandra. "Wall Street Journal, New York Post Sue AI Startup Perplexity, Alleging 'Massive Freeriding'". WSJ. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  30. ^ Spangler, Todd (October 25, 2024). "AI Startup Perplexity Fires Back After News Corp's Dow Jones Sues: 'Adversarial' Media Companies 'Wish This Technology Didn't Exist'". Variety. Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  31. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (January 31, 2025). "AI startup Perplexity sued for alleged trademark infringement". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  32. ^ Brittain, Blake (January 31, 2025). "Perplexity AI sued by software company for trademark infringement". Reuters. Retrieved March 10, 2025.
  33. ^ Mehrotra, Dhruv; Marchman, Tim (June 19, 2024). "Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine". Wired. Archived from the original on June 20, 2024. Retrieved June 20, 2024.
  34. ^ "Perplexity AI is Lying about their User-Agent". Robb Knight. June 15, 2024. Archived from the original on June 20, 2024. Retrieved June 20, 2024.
  35. ^ a b Sullivan, Mark (June 21, 2024). "Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas responds to plagiarism and infringement accusations". Fast Company. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
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