#080 Perplexity AI Raises $74 Million to Take on Google with AI-Powered Search, Articul8 AI: A New Chapter in Intel's AI Strategy
Fresh & Hot curated AI happenings in one snack. Never miss a byte 🍔
This snack byte will take approx 5 minutes to consume.
AI BYTE #1 📢: Perplexity AI Raises $74 Million to Take on Google with AI-Powered Search
⭐ If you are tired of sifting through endless lists of links and websites to find the answers you need, you might want to try Perplexity AI, a startup that aims to revolutionize web search with artificial intelligence.
Perplexity AI, founded less than two years ago by a team of engineers and AI researchers, has recently raised $74 million in a funding round led by Institutional Venture Partners, with participation from Jeff Bezos and other tech executives.
The investment valued the company at $520 million, making it one of the most valuable internet search startups in recent years.
So what makes Perplexity AI different from Google and other search engines?
According to its founders, Perplexity AI offers a conversational search engine that provides direct answers, instead of website links, in response to natural language queries. Users can also ask follow-up questions and get more information based on the context of the previous answers.
It claims that its advantage is using advances in AI, such as Gen AI and large language models, to deliver accurate and relevant information with citations from reliable sources. The company also says that it avoids the problems of advertising and search engine optimization that can manipulate the results of traditional search engines.
The company has attracted a loyal following of tech enthusiasts and early adopters, who are eager to try new services powered by Gen AI, the same technology behind chatbots such as ChatGPT.
The company’s website and mobile apps had 53 million visits in November, up from 2.2 million when the service became available in December 2022, according to Similarweb data.
The company also offers a paid version of its site for heavy users, which costs $20 a month and allows access to GPT-4, the most advanced AI technology from OpenAI. Perplexity AI is one of the few companies that have access to GPT-4, which is not publicly available yet.
Perplexity AI faces a formidable challenge in competing with Google, which dominates the web search market with a 90% share and has invested billions in improving its search algorithms and features. Google has also begun rolling out a feature that provides lengthy summaries in response to some search queries, though it has not introduced it widely yet.
Other search startups, such as Neeva and Bing Chat, have also tried to use Gen AI to provide direct answers, but have failed to gain enough traction or market share. Microsoft, which owns Bing, has also struggled to make a dent in Google’s dominance, despite introducing a version of its search engine that can act like a chatbot.
Perplexity AI’s founders acknowledge the difficulties of taking on Google, but they are confident that their technology and vision will appeal to users who are looking for a better way to find information online. They also plan to use the new funding to expand their team, improve their product, and grow their user base.
Perplexity AI is not just a search engine, but a conversational answer engine that aims to provide the best of AI at your fingertips. If you are curious about how it works, you can try it out for free at perplexity.ai. You might be surprised by what you find.
AI BYTE #2 📢: Articul8 AI: A New Chapter in Intel's AI Strategy
⭐ Intel has announced the spinout of a new platform company, Articul8 AI, with the support of DigitalBridge, an asset manager and investor based in Boca Raton, Florida.
The new entity, a result of Intel's collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, has developed a Gen AI system that can read text and images, running on Intel hardware and a combination of open source and internally sourced software.
Initially, BCG was the sole supplier and customer of the system, but Intel has worked to scale the platform to companies in various industries, including financial services, aerospace, semiconductor, and telecommunications, that require high levels of security and specialized domain knowledge.
The product was built to address the needs of enterprises and is optimized for speed of deployment, scalability, security, and sustainability, including costs. The platform keeps customer data, training, and inference within the enterprise security perimeter and provides the choice of cloud, on-premises, or hybrid deployment.
Arun Subramaniyan, formerly a VP and GM at Intel’s data center and AI group, will become the spinout’s CEO, and the rest of the Articul8 team will comprise ex-Intel employees. Intel will retain an undisclosed stake in the firm.
The new company's investors include DigitalBridge, Fin Capital, Mindset Ventures, Communitas Capital, GiantLeap Capital, GS Futures, and Zain Group
Articul8 AI, will not be publicly traded and is an outgrowth of Intel's work on corporate AI technology. It is part of Intel's strategy to seek outside capital for business units, and the chipmaker plans to leverage Articul8’s enterprise Gen AI software for internal use cases as well as offer it to end customers as part of a joint go-to-market partnership.
This move is in line with Intel's plans to deliver new software products and services, including GenAI-powered products, to make its hardware more attractive for a range of applications.