Perplexity raises $100M, reaches $18B valuation

Perplexity closed a $100 million funding round at an $18 billion valuation, backed by Nvidia and SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, according to reports. The figure was up from a $14 billion valuation reported earlier that year and roughly six times a $3 billion valuation from the previous year, marking the company’s fifth capital raise in about 18 months.

The round came as Perplexity’s annualised recurring revenue was reported to be approaching $200 million, up from around $150 million reported a month earlier — rapid growth for a company still competing against Google, OpenAI and a crowded field of AI-search entrants, and one that had also drawn legal challenges, including a lawsuit from Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster over its use of published content. Perplexity had by this point raised roughly $1 billion in total.

The pace of the raises, rather than any single round, was the notable feature: successive funding events compressed into months rather than years, each priced well above the last, in a market willing to fund AI-search challengers at valuations that assumed continued rapid growth rather than current revenue. Perplexity’s rise continued through the rest of the year, with the company reaching a $20 billion valuation within two months.