Perplexity, an AI search engine startup, recently announced it has surpassed $100 million in annual revenue. CEO Aravind Srinivas shared the news on LinkedIn, noting that Perplexity Pro reached this milestone just 20 months after launch and saw 6.3x growth in the past year, despite remaining "highly unmonetized."
Image Source: AI-generated image, licensed through Midjourney
Perplexity offers a free plan and a $20/month Pro plan with enhanced features. They also provide a $40/user enterprise plan for companies with fewer than 250 employees. For developers, Perplexity allows integration of its Sonar AI model via API.
Perplexity is currently in talks with investors to raise $500 million to $1 billion, projecting a valuation of $18 billion. This is double its $9 billion valuation from a $500 million funding round last December. Its investors include NVIDIA, SoftBank Group, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Perplexity is making its internally developed Sonar AI model available to all Pro users. Users can set Sonar as the default model in their settings. Sonar, built on Meta's open-source Llama 3.370B and utilizing Cerebras inference technology (claimed to be the world's fastest AI inference engine), can generate 1200 tokens per second. Previously, Sonar was only available to developers via API.
Many startups have seen rapid growth by building AI products in recent years. For example, Cursor, an AI coding platform, reached $100 million in annual revenue just 21 months after its founding, achieving this growth from $1 million to $100 million in only 12 months, making it one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in history. Last year, AI image generator Midjourney reached $200 million in annual revenue with only 11 employees. Another AI coding platform, Bolt.new, surpassed $30 million in annual revenue and registered 3 million users in just 4 months.
Key Highlights:
🔹 Perplexity's annual revenue exceeded $100 million, achieving a 6.3x year-over-year growth rate.
🔹 The company plans to raise $500 million to $1 billion, reaching an $18 billion valuation.
🔹 The Sonar AI model is now available to all Pro users and is claimed to be the world's fastest inference engine.
