Perplexity AI in funding talks to more than double valuation to $8 billion, WSJ reports

(Reuters) -Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI has begun fundraising talks in which it is looking to more than double its valuation to $8 billion or more, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Perplexity has told investors it is looking to raise around $500 million in the new funding round, the Journal reported citing people familiar with the matter.

The Nvidia-backed artificial intelligence (AI) company’s estimated annualized revenue based on recent sales is currently about $50 million, the report added.

Perplexity AI did not immediately respond to request for comment outside regular business hours.

In October the startup said it had received a “cease and desist” notice from the New York Times demanding it to stop using the newspaper’s content for generative AI purposes.

Perplexity has previously faced accusations from media organizations such as Forbes and Wired for plagiarizing their content, but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address some concerns put forward by publishers.

Perplexity’s search tools enable users to get instant answers to questions with sources and citations. It is powered by a variety of large language models (LLMs) that can sum up and generate information, from OpenAI to Meta (NASDAQ:META)’s open-source model Llama.