Bezos Invests in AI Startup Perplexity to Take On Google Search

Can tiny artificial intelligence (AI) startup Perplexity take on Google in the search space?

Jeff Bezos apparently thinks so.

The Amazon founder is among the backers of the company that is not yet two year old, recently investing $74 million with a group of venture capitalists, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (Jan. 4).

The report notes that this is the largest amount raised by an internet search startup in recent years, valuing Perplexity at $520 million. It also points out that Amazon — still chaired by Bezos — has committed billions to AI firm Anthropic.

While many companies have tried — and failed — to compete with Google, Perplexity’s founders tell the WSJ they have an edge in using AI to offer direct answers and not website links in response to search queries.

“If you can directly answer somebody’s question, nobody needs those 10 blue links,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said.

Founders say the company has barely invested in standard marketing, relying instead on word of mouth and social media buzz. So far, that strategy appears to have worked, with Perplexity’s website and mobile apps receiving 53 million visits in November, up from 2.2 million when the service launched in December 2022.

According to the WSJ, Perplexity serves just millions of users compared to Google’s billions, but has cultivated fans among tech workers hungry for new services that use generative AI.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS this week looked at the process of integrating those services into a business, noting it was “not too dissimilar from the on-boarding process required by any other enterprise-level software adoption or modernization process.”

The first step is conducting a self-assessment to establish a use case, the idea being that AI tools are goal-oriented and need to be used to solve real problems.

“No matter the ways and means in which AI is being harnessed, it’s incumbent on firms to mull how they can enhance value rather than just chase a trend,” Shaunt Sarkissian, founder and CEO of AI-ID, told PYMNTS in May.

A July 2023 PYMNTS Intelligence and AI-ID collaboration, “Understanding the Future of Generative Al,” found that large language models (LLMs) — the neural networks behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s LaMDA — could impact 40% of all working hours, meaning that it shouldn’t be too difficult for firms to find work at which to point their AI solutions.