Jeff Bezos’ investment in this AI startup doubled in value in a few months

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is betting big on Perplexity AI, a startup that is taking on search giant Google. Previously, this funding round valued Perplexity AI at about $520 million, but the company is now finalizing a new funding deal at a valuation of about $1 billion, Wall said. The Street Journal reported this, citing people familiar with the matter. This means that Jeff’s Bezos’ investment in the company has nearly doubled in just a few months, as Perplexity AI’s monthly active users reach his 10 million mark. Masu.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told Fortune: Are you building a company with limitless potential? It’s risky, but if done right, the rewards are limitless. ” Founded in August 2022, the company is challenging Google by offering an AI-based search engine that is “part chatbot and part search engine, providing real-time information and footnotes pointing to the source of answers.” The company said that

In January of this year, Perplexity reached 10 million monthly active users and responded to more than 500 million queries by 2023, the CEO said, adding that the company has been working with various angels including venture capitalists, Nvidia and Jeff Bezos. It shared that it had raised $73.6 million from investors. Jonathan Cohen, Nvidia’s vice president of applied research, said that artificial intelligence is “transforming the way we access information,” and that Perplexity is “one of the few consumer AI products to reach this major milestone of 10 million MAUs.” He said he was the one.

Perplexity AI’s competition with Google

“Google will be seen as legacy and old, and Perplexity will be seen as next-gen and future,” the company’s CEO told news agency Reuters.

“Google has no incentive to actually move quickly and make this product experience a success, because their core funding comes from getting people to click on links and view links,” he told Fortune. “Our value proposition is that the free product is already very good.” You can still use it without paying, but the paid product would be insane. ”

“The days of SEO spam, sponsored links, and sifting through multiple web pages will give way to far more efficient ways to consume and share information,” he wrote in the company’s January announcement. .