Media reports that Perplexity AI, a startup that developed an artificial intelligence-based search engine, is currently in the final stages of the process of raising $500 million in funding with a valuation of $9 billion.

The journalists published the mentioned information, referring to an insider who is aware of the internal processes that taking place in the specified company. This information does not belong to the public category.

Perplexity AI is gradually strengthening its position in the artificial intelligence market. The main competitors of the startup are such players in the machine intelligence industry as Google and OpenAI, which developed the world’s most popular chatbot called ChatGPT.

In June, the valuation of Perplexity AI was fixed at $3 billion. An insider who spoke with media representatives and used the right of anonymity because in this case information is not classified as public, the new round of financing is led by Institutional Venture Partners, based in the Bay area.

It is worth noting that at the beginning of the current year, the valuation of Perplexity AI was approximately $500 million. Since then, investor attention to the startup has been on an upward trajectory. To a large extent, the mentioned dynamic is associated with the so-called artificial intelligence boom. The corresponding process actually began after the debut of ChatGPT in November 2022. This chatbot demonstrated in the practical plane the impressive abilities of AI related to information processing and generating original content. The boom of artificial intelligence in the financial sense is manifested in massive amounts of investment in the relevant industry. Moreover, AI has significant potential. The most ambitious futurological forecasts provide that artificial intelligence in the process of its technological evolution can transform into a new autonomous form of mind existing in the digital space, capable of independent development and with the prospect of surpassing human consciousness in terms of the quality of cognitive operations.

Perplexity AI has already raised four rounds of funding in the current year.

Last week, OpenAI launched a search feature in ChatGPT. With a high degree of probability, the appropriate solution will strengthen the company’s competitiveness in the area of information search on the Internet using artificial intelligence. At the same time, Perplexity AI is becoming an increasingly significant player in the mentioned area. The new OpenAI feature is likely to strengthen the company’s position in competition with such large and most popular search engines in the world as Google and Microsoft’s Bing. A new offer from ChatGPT developer provides consumers with access to up-to-the-minute sports scores, stock quotes, news, weather, and more. In this case, real-time web search is used and partnerships with news and data providers are implemented.

It is worth noting that Perplexity AI has faced accusations of plagiarism of media content. Last month, the New York Times sent the startup a cease and desist notice, claiming that the firm scrapes the news outlet’s content to generate answers. Perplexity AI has denied these allegations.

In July, the startup presented a revenue-sharing model for publishers. The corresponding model provides that Perplexity AI shares advertising revenue with publishers whose information materials are used to generate responses to user requests.

Artificial intelligence systems are trained on the basis of large amounts of data from the Internet space. Sometimes there are claims that some content in the direct citation format is used by AI without the consent of the copyright holders.