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In today’s world, after the entry of AI, things have been confusing for users across the web. Finding the right information in real time has become a headache.
In a phase like this, Perplexity AI has emerged as one of the greatest solutions to find real-time information, discover topics, and interact with information likewise.
In this piece of content, we’ll delve deeper into the team behind the start-up, the past of Perplexity AI, its current Solutions, future goals, and some figures about their success.
What is Perplexity AI?
Perplexity AI is an AI-powered engine that helps find direct, real-time information for user queries, making it different from other competitors like OpenAI and DeepSeek R1.
Not only does it provide valuable information, but it also provides citations to the sources from which the information is derived.
The Perplexity search engine is different from that of Google, where you need to scroll through pages to find the info. Here, you need to search the query, and you’ll have your desired answer with the right citations. Isn’t it cool?
The Story, Founders, and Team Behind Perplexity AI
Perplexity AI Inc. was founded by 4 people back in 2022 in San Francisco, who are:
Aravind Srinivas: CEO, PhD in AI (UC Berkeley), previously worked with OpenAI and Google Research.
Denis Yarats: Chief Technology Officer at Perplexity, an expert in machine learning who previously worked as an AI research scientist at Meta.
Johnny Ho: Chief Strategy Officer, specialist engineer in designing infrastructure, who previously worked at Quora.
Andy Konwinski: President and Board Member, A specialist in AI and cloud computing, who was also a co-founder of Databricks.
Inspiration behind Perplexity
Aravind was frustrated with the conventional search engines, where one can’t get direct answers to their queries, which led to the idea of building Perplexity AI.
This startup aimed to build an AI-based search engine that provides accurate information to its users without surfing through multiple web pages.
Despite competing with big tech giants like Google, the start-up got investment from one of the high-profile investors, Jeff Bezos, and built trust among users.
The core of this AI-based startup is to provide transparent information to their users without distracting them, which has made them one of the fastest-growing startups worldwide.
Now, let’s explore what this new start-up provides its users.
What does Perplexity AI do?
Perplexity uses Large Language Models (LLMs) and advanced natural language processing to do the following things:
- 1) Understand the intent and context of the user query apart from keywords.
- 2) Search in real-time to find and analyse different sources within seconds.
- 3) Provide direct answers to your queries.
- 4) Provide citations to each piece of information provided by them, which helps you verify their provided answers.
- 5) Continues the same context through your session over multiple questions.
- 6) It accepts various input models like text, voice, file uploads, and more.
Top Features of Perplexity
- 1) Quick search with authentic information.
- 2) Pro Search for detailed reports around the queries of users.
- 3) Custom Knowledge Hubs: Have personalised databases at your fingertips.
- 4) Collaborative Spaces: Now, group research and content creation are possible with Perplexity.
- 5) Al Browser (Comet): Perplexity makes your task easier to manage web pages, shop online, and create emails via voice or text.
Achievements, Profits, Valuation, and More
Valuation
The startup recently hit $18 billion milestone in July 2025 after the $100 million funding round.
The company hit the $1 billion (unicorn) mark in early 2024, and by mid-2025, they reached the $14 billion mark and have now hit $18 billion.
Revenue
By mid-2025, the annual revenue of the startup is projected to be somewhere around $150 million, which was $35 million in 2024.
By May 2025, the company reached $100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
Users
With over 30 million users, the monthly search queries have recently touched the $780 million mark.
Growth over months
The start-up has achieved a 20% month-on-month growth rate in active users.
Funding
The company has raised a total of more than $1.02 billion over 8 rounds, with the first round starting on March 28, 2023.
Product Expansion
Apart from its core engine to provide answers to user queries, they’ve launched the Comet browser and have recently partnered with Airtel in India, where it provides benefits of over 17000 INR to its users.
Future Goals and Plans for Perplexity
The major plans for this AI-based startup are:
- 1) Creating an AI assistant for performing difficult web tasks, making user interaction smoother and enjoyable, and eliminating the hurdle of visiting different platforms and sources.
- 2) Coping with the ethical challenges like copyright lawsuits from top media firms and still providing transparency with accurate information to their users.
- 3) Expanding their solutions on global platforms by partnering with international companies.
- 4) Advancing in AI to not only provide answers to your questions but also guide you through different tasks and provide real-time recommendations.
How can Perplexity AI help you?
This AI Revolutionary startup can help you in the following ways:
- 1) Can save your hours, which go into research, by providing the right info with citations from trustworthy platforms and sources.
- 2) Providing you with top knowledge regarding any topic that isn’t accessible to you via other platforms.
- 3) The platform can help business owners by assisting the users individually, which can help boost sales and user engagement.
- 4) With the help of its vast database, the platform can help your business forecast trends and help in creating strategies accordingly.
Conclusion
Perplexity AI has become a go-to platform in today’s time thanks to its user-focused intent to provide the solution within seconds.
The efforts of the team, founders, exponential growth, continuous innovation, and providing the right information have made them one of the leading platforms within a short period.
Whether you are a random web user, a business owner, or a developer, Perplexity has a lot to offer you to take your productivity forward.
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