Perplexity AI
Perplexity
Perplexity AI is an AI search engine founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, a former OpenAI researcher who studied at UC Berkeley and also held internships at Google and DeepMind . The company positions itself as an "answer engine" that provides real-time, sourced responses with lower hallucination rates than typical chatbots, displaying citations and follow-up questions in a conversational interface .
The product competes directly with ChatGPT for user mindshare in the AI-assisted search space , and has seen rapid growth: monthly active users reached roughly 15 million by April 2024, with website traffic hitting 280 million monthly visits as of late 2025 . Its model integration strategy has expanded to include Moonshot AI's Kimi K2 Thinking alongside four closed-source options, a move Perplexity's CEO cited as driven by strong internal evaluations .
On funding, the company has climbed steeply in valuation — from unicorn status at over $1 billion in April 2024 , to $3 billion for a SoftBank Vision Fund 2 investment that June , then $9 billion by late 2024 , and $18 billion as of July 2025 per a portfolio review . Early backing also came from AI Grant, which identified Perplexity in its first batch in June 2023 .
Srinivas has been vocal about the business model: he considers advertising "the greatest business model" with 80% margins and views $20 monthly subscriptions as insufficient, while the team experiments with commerce integrations like in-search shopping . The tension between monetization and the ad-averse early-user base remains an open product challenge, as Srinivas acknowledged in interviews .
AI-generated — may contain errors, please verify.
Coverage
Behind the Developer Enthusiasm for the Lark CLI, We See These Key Points
"The ancient" CLI has become an anchor point in the AI era.
Another New Player Enters the AI Browser Race: Tabbit Joins the Fray
Is Tabbit AI Browser Actually Good? How Do You Use It?
At This Year's Year-End Party, My Colleague Got Upstaged by AI | A Yunqi Capital Holiday Gathering Notes
AI, and each other
In the AI Era, There Are Only Builders — No Seats on the Sidelines | Quarterly
Let's go.
Moonshot AI's Yutong Zhang: The "1%" Exception Under the Capital-and-Compute Determinism | Tsinghua University Campus Talk
Seeking the optimal solution for converting energy into intelligence.
Looking Ahead to 2026: What Innovation Opportunities Await the AI Industry? | Frees Report
From Large Models to World Models: Where Will AI Head in 2026?
MaKe | MaHui Member Moonshot AI Releases Kimi K2 Thinking Model as Open Source, Boosting Agent and Reasoning Capabilities
Natively masters the ability to "think while using tools."
Moonshot AI Releases and Open-Sources Kimi K2 Thinking Model, Boosting Agent and Reasoning Capabilities | Z News
Moonshot AI's most capable open-source reasoning model to date.
Moonshot AI K2 Thinking Model Released and Open-Sourced, with Major Upgrades to Agent and Reasoning Capabilities | BlueRun Ventures Family Headlines
API is now live.
Jensen Huang: AI Will Become a Multimodal, Multi-Embodied General-Purpose System | Vital Views
Counselor Vitality
AI Writing Guide 2.0: Input Matters More Than Output
The input of information matters more than the output.
Better Than YC! How AI Grant Uncovered Unicorns Like Perplexity, Pika, and Cursor | Full Portfolio List Inside
AI Grant is Silicon Valley's "trust passport."
BlueRun Ventures Leads Investment in Yingmu Technology's New Tens-of-Millions USD Funding Round | BlueRun Portfolio
Folding Vision into 3D
Are Model and 'Shell' Values Both Underestimated? ZhenFund's Yusen Dai's Mid-2025 AI Review
In 2025, the "Sedol moment" for industries far and wide is only just beginning.
Moonshot AI K2 Released, Setting a New Open-Source SOTA! Perplexity Opens Post-Training, Tops Hugging Face Trending | Gaorong Future
Open Source. Model as Agent.
Yusen Dai of ZhenFund: From "No Need to Pay" to "Can't Live Without It," AI Is on Track to Shatter Humanity's Fastest Growth Records
The development of AI is a bit like boiling water — once it hits the boiling point, the arrival of the steam engine will spark a new industrial revolution.
"Potential Energy" Is the Moat for AI Products | Latest from a16z
You need to break the mold.
Deep Dive: Why the Next Stop for General-Purpose Agents Is the Agentic Browser?
The Next Stop on the Road to General Agents
"The Internet Queen" on the AI Era: Decoding Mary Meeker's *AI Trends Report* | Yunqi Capital Techπ
The AI wave is accelerating, bringing both opportunities and risks.
What Breakthroughs Are Behind the "Super Search" Launched Today by the World's No. 2 AI Search Engine?
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
HubSpot CEO In-Depth Interview: Behind the $10B+ Market Cap, on AI Strategy and Hybrid Pricing | Z Talk
AI is the greatest enabler in the history of SMBs.
Behind Manus's Viral Moment: 20 Questions to Understand AI Agent
Here's everything you want to know about Manus & AI Agent.
What's Behind the Manus Hype: How Can Agentic AI Products Build Lasting Competitive Advantages?
🚥 Koji Editor's Note: Next week, Crossing's podcast will feature the third installment of our "20 Questions" column.
The Evolution of AI Search, the Manus Explosion, the Rise of Agents, and AI's Transformation of Education: Jishisan's Tech Outlook for 2025
The world is speeding up.
The Evolution of AI Search, the Manus Explosion, the Rise of Agents, and AI's Transformation of Education: Science Popularization Platform Guokr Founder Eric Ji's 2025 Tech Outlook
Ten Thousand-Word Interview with Perplexity's Growth Lead: People Need to Hear About Your Product 3 to 7 Times Before They Actually Try It
Growth is a game of intuition.
A Long Conversation with Yusen Dai on Agents: Every Industry Will Face Its "Sedol Moment" — Is Attention Not All You Need?
From OpenAI Intern to Perplexity Founder: What I Learned Building a Startup to "Challenge Google" | Bolt Picks
The so-called "building the next generation of information interaction experiences"
A Deep Dive into the Beauty of DeepSeek's Creation: How Was DeepSeek R1 Forged?
AI penetration today is only 5%. For the remaining 95%, what will their first AI application be?
Ban one TikTok, and a thousand TikToks will rise in its place | Undercurrent Worldview
The Perils of Globalization for Chinese Companies
2025 New Year Conversation with Koji: AI's Pivotal Year, the Dawn of the Agent Era | Seriously Speaking EP35
Stay optimistic about AI.
2025 Kickoff Conversation: The Critical Year for AI, The Dawn of the Agent Era | A Conversation with ZhenFund's Yusen Dai
"You couldn't have built Douyin in the BlackBerry era."
Essential SEO for the AI Era | Bolt Recommends
Vercel Research: The Rise of AI Crawlers
How to Do SEO in the Face of Massive AI-Generated Content | Bolt's Pick
Always create valuable content for your users.
Perplexity's Head of Growth on the Search Engine's Biggest Growth Experiments | Bolt Recommends
Growth driven entirely by word-of-mouth, no paid promotion, community channels are worth investing in
Event Recap | Search, Character.AI, Hardware: A Year of AI's Bumpy Road to Real-World Deployment
Linear Capital vs. Zhipu AI's Z Program — Text Summary
Spirit AI Releases First Demo, Aiming to Build Generalizable Robots | Oasis Capital Vitality
Counselor Vitality
a16z Releases Global Top 100 AI Apps List: ByteDance Shines, Dating and Cross-Modal Apps on the Rise
New shifts, new opportunities, new ambitions.
10,000-Word Interview with Perplexity AI CEO: Advertising Is the Greatest Business Model; $20/Month Subscriptions Are Not | Z Talk
The value isn't in the model — it's in the people who create it.
Yann LeCun and Saining Xie release Cambrian-1 | ByteDance AI dev tool goes live | SoftBank to invest in Perplexity
Yann LeCun and Saining Xie Release Cambrian-1 | ByteDance Launches AI Development Tool | SoftBank to Invest in Perplexity
Yusen Dai: Embrace the Era, Optimism, and the Power of Young People | Crossover with AI Tech Review Talk
Standing at the AI Crossing, the Future Comes Roaring In | 16 Observations and Reflections from My Q1
The green mountains endure, the clear waters flow on — change never misses its cue.
Enlightenment Weekly | Why Read Warren Buffett's Shareholder Letter Every Year? Here Are 6 Reasons
What's scarce isn't knowledge — it's wisdom.
Happy first birthday to ChatGPT-3.5! What new lessons have AI and we learned over the past year? | Yunqi Tech Talk
AI's Spectacular Year
"Robots Pick the Best Robots" — Unveiling the 2023 Global Top 10 List | Y·Robot
Breakthroughs in AI, exponential growth in computing power and cloud infrastructure, and new materials continuously improving durability and energy efficiency... In 2023, robotics entered an exciting new stage of development.
Three Months, 300 Plugins: What Kind of Ecosystem Is ChatGPT Building? | Yunqi Tech Talks
Before finding the next explosive growth point, you first need to ensure information security, balanced performance, and system stability.
"Yunqi · Silicon Valley FutureScope" In the LLM Era, Who Is the World's Most Powerful Influencer?
Yunqi Capital Investors' Silicon Valley Trip: A Firsthand Account
