(Reuters) – Japanese technology investor SoftBank Group Corp’s Vision Fund 2 is investing between $10 million and $20 million in U.S. search startup Perplexity AI at a valuation of $3 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
(Reuters) – Japanese technology investor SoftBank Group Corp’s Vision Fund 2 is investing between $10 million and $20 million in U.S. search startup Perplexity AI at a valuation of $3 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
SoftBank will make this investment as part of a larger $250 million funding round, the report, said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The deal hasn’t been finalized and its terms could still change, it said.
SoftBank and Perplexity did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Perplexity’s search tools enable users to get instant answers to questions with sources and citations. It is powered by a variety of large language models that can sum up and generate information, from OpenAI to Meta’s open-source model Llama.
San Francisco, California-based Perplexity AI in January raised $73.6 million from a group of investors including Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at a valuation of $520 million.
The company had earlier said it served more than 500 million queries in 2023 while spending few marketing dollars.
(Reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)
Venture capital is a type of private equity financing that is provided to startups and small businesses with long-term growth potential. Investors provide capital in exchange for equity, or ownership stake, in the company.
A startup is a newly established business, often in the early stages of development. Startups typically aim to innovate and grow rapidly, often seeking funding from investors to scale their operations.
Valuation is the process of determining the current worth of an asset or a company. It is often used in investment and finance to assess the value of a business before investment or acquisition.
Large language models are advanced artificial intelligence systems that are trained on vast amounts of text data. They can generate human-like text, answer questions, and perform various language-related tasks.
Funding refers to the financial resources provided to a business or project to support its operations and growth. This can come from various sources, including investors, loans, or grants.
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