Perplexity AI

Summary active Updated Apr 19, 2026

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Location San Francisco, CA
Founded 2022
Latest Stage Series E
Total Raised $1.5B+
Sector

Investors

Elad Gil Seed (2022)
Nat Friedman Seed (2022)
Garry Tan Series C (2024)
Eduardo Saverin Growth (2023)
Daniel Gross Growth (via NFDG) (2024)
Guillermo Rauch Series B (2024)
Dylan Field Series B1 (2024)
Steve Jang Seed (2023)
Y Combinator Seed (2022)
b-capital-group Growth (2023)
NFDG Growth (via NFDG) (2024)
independent Early stage (2022)
vercel Series B (2024)
gil-capital Early stage (2022)
kindred-ventures Seed (2023)
IVP

Founders

Aravind Srinivas CEO & Co-Founder
Denis Yarats CTO & Co-Founder
Johnny Ho CSO & Co-Founder
Andy Konwinski President & Co-Founder

About

Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search engine founded in August 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski 12. Srinivas previously held research positions at OpenAI, Google Brain, and DeepMind; Yarats was an AI research scientist at Meta; Ho was an engineer at Quora and quantitative trader at Tower Research Capital; and Konwinski was a co-founder of Databricks 2. The company launched its search engine on December 7, 2022 1. As of September 2025, Perplexity was valued at $20 billion and had raised over $1.5 billion in total funding 3.

Funding History

Round Date Amount Lead Investor(s) Key Co-Investors Valuation
Seed 2022-09 $3.1M Elad Gil, Nat Friedman Yann LeCun, Andrej Karpathy, Ashish Vaswani, Amjad Masad, Clem Delangue, Pieter Abbeel Not disclosed 10
Series A 2023-03-28 $25.6M NEA (Peter Sonsini) Databricks Ventures, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, Bob Muglia, Jeff Dean, Paul Buchheit Not disclosed 411
Series B 2024-01 $73.6M IVP NVIDIA, Bezos Expeditions, Bessemer Venture Partners $520M
Series C 2024-04 $62.7M Daniel Gross Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA, Stan Druckenmiller, Tobias Lutke, Garry Tan $1B
Series D 2024-12 $500M IVP, SoftBank Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA $9B
Series E 2025-05-12 $500M Accel $14B 7
Extension 2025-07-17 $100M Accel NVIDIA, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, NEA, IVP $18B 1213
Round 2025-09-10 $200M $20B

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What Investors Say

No independently sourced investor testimonials found.

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found.

Sources


  1. Perplexity AI, Wikipedia, accessed March 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perplexity_AI

  2. Entrepreneurloop, “Perplexity AI Origin Story: How Founders Built $18B Search Engine,” accessed March 2026. https://entrepreneurloop.com/perplexity-ai-origin-story-founders-journey/

  3. TechCrunch, “Perplexity reportedly raised $200M at $20B valuation,” September 10, 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/perplexity-reportedly-raised-200m-at-20b-valuation/

  4. Latham & Watkins, “Latham & Watkins Advises Perplexity.AI in US$25.6 Million Series A Financing,” March 2023. https://www.lw.com/en/news/2023/03/latham-advises-perplexityai-in-series-a-financing

  5. TexAu, “How Much Did Perplexity Raise? Funding & Key Investors,” accessed March 2026. https://www.texau.com/profiles/perplexity

  6. Latham & Watkins, “Latham & Watkins Advises Perplexity AI in US$62.7 Million Series C Funding Round,” April 2024. https://www.lw.com/en/news/2024/04/latham-watkins-advises-perplexity-ai-in-us62-7-million-series-b-funding-round

  7. CNBC, “Perplexity AI wrapping talks to raise $500 million at $14 billion valuation,” May 12, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/12/perplexity-funding-round-comet.html

  8. PYMNTS, “Report: Perplexity Closed $500 Million Funding Round in Early December,” December 2024. https://www.pymnts.com/news/investment-tracker/2024/report-perplexity-closed-500-million-funding-round-in-early-december/

  9. Britannica Money, “Perplexity AI | Founders, Investors, & Facts,” accessed March 2026. https://www.britannica.com/money/Perplexity-AI

  10. Perplexity AI, “Announcing Our Series A Funding Round and Mobile App Launch,” March 28, 2023 (references the prior $3.1M seed led by Elad Gil and Nat Friedman). https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/announcing-our-series-a-funding-round-and-mobile-app-launch

  11. Benzinga / PR Newswire, “Perplexity AI Launches iOS Version of Conversational Answer Engine, Announces $25.6M Series A Round Led by NEA,” March 28, 2023. https://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/23/03/n31525879/perplexity-ai-launches-ios-version-of-conversational-answer-engine-announces-25-6m-series-a-round-

  12. Bloomberg, “Aravind Srinivas’ Startup Perplexity AI Valued at $18 Billion With New Funding,” July 17, 2025. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-17/ai-startup-perplexity-valued-at-18-billion-with-new-funding

  13. PYMNTS, “Perplexity AI Hits $18 Billion Valuation in Latest Funding Round,” July 18, 2025. https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2025/perplexity-ai-hits-18-billion-valuation-in-latest-funding-round/