perplexity has reportedly closed a $500m funding round

ai-powered search engine perplexity has reportedly closed a $500 million funding round, valuing the startup at $9 billion.bloomberg, citing sources familiar, reports that the round was led by institutional venture partners and that it closed earlier in december. in an email to techcrunch, a perplexity spokesperson declined to comment.
the mammoth tranche comes as the competition in ai-powered search heats up. openai recently launched chatgpt search, its answer to perplexity. and google is developing capabilities to rival some of what perplexity offers, including ai-generated summaries and answers on search results pages. this week, the information reported that google is planning to take a more aggressive move, potentially building a chatbot-like “ai mode” directly into google search.perplexity isn’t resting on its laurels even as it battles a class action lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement. on wednesday, the company made its second acquisition, snatching up carbon, a startup specializing in connecting ai systems to external data sources.