Perplexity AI, supported by Jeff Bezos, has initiated discussions for fundraising, aiming to increase its valuation to $8 billion or more, as reported by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
The company has informed investors of its intention to secure approximately $500 million in this funding round, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Currently, the Nvidia-backed AI firm has an estimated annualized revenue of around $50 million based on its recent sales, the report noted.
Perplexity AI did not provide a comment when approached outside of regular business hours.
In October, the startup received a "cease and desist" notice from the New York Times, requesting that it cease using the newspaper's content for generative AI applications.
Previously, Perplexity faced allegations from media outlets like Forbes and Wired regarding content plagiarism, but it has since implemented a revenue-sharing program to address some of the concerns raised by publishers.
Perplexity's search tools allow users to obtain immediate answers to inquiries, complete with sources and citations. The platform utilizes a range of large language models (LLMs), including those from OpenAI and Meta's open-source model, Llama.