IVP Leads Investment in AI Search Startup Perplexity at $500 Million Valuation

Venture capital firm IVP is leading an investment in Perplexity, developer of an artificial intelligence–powered search engine that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, according to people with direct knowledge. The deal values the 1-year-old company at around $500 million, including the new capital, up from a $150 million post-investment valuation from an earlier financing announced in March.

Perplexity is generating $3 million in annual recurring revenue as of this month, meaning the deal will give it a valuation multiple of about 150 times ARR. That’s a staggering price for a company with early traction but comparable to some generative AI-related startups that recently raised cash, such as model developer Anthropic and AI model repository Hugging Face.