(Reuters) – Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI has entered into fundraising talks in which it wants to more than double its valuation to $8 billion or more, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Perplexity informed investors that it intends to raise approximately $500 million in a new round of financing, the daily reports, citing people familiar with the matter.
The report added that the Nvidia-backed artificial intelligence (AI) company’s estimated annual revenue is currently around $50 million based on recent sales.
Perplexity AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours.
In October, the startup said it had received a cease-and-desist notice from The New York Times, demanding it stop using the newspaper’s content for generative artificial intelligence purposes.
Perplexity has previously faced accusations from media organizations such as Forbes and Wired of plagiarizing their content, but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address some concerns raised by publishers.
Perplexity’s search tools allow users to get instant answers to questions with sources and citations. It relies on a variety of large language models (LLMs) that can summarize and generate information, from OpenAI to the open-source Meta (NASDAQ:) Llama model.
