Perplexity is reportedly in talks to raise up to $1B at an $18B valuation

AI-powered search startup Perplexity is said to be in early talks to raise up to $1 billion in a new funding round valuing the startup at $18 billion.

Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported on Thursday that Perplexity’s annual recurring revenue has now reached $100 million.

Perplexity’s valuation has soared in recent years. This new round would double Perplexity’s current valuation — $9 billion — as of December. In April 2024, Perplexity was valued at $1 billion.

Rumors of a new round come as competition in the AI-powered search space heats up.

On Thursday, Anthropic added web search to its consumer AI chatbot, Claude. Earlier in March, Google launched an early version of a chat-based AI search engine, called AI Mode, for a limited group of testers.

Perhaps because its core market is becoming increasingly crowded, Perplexity is trying to expand into new areas. The startup recently teased the launch of an “agentic” browser called Comet, and it has ramped up its enterprise offerings, recently launching an AI search engine to help businesses retrieve information from internal documents.

We’ve reached out to Perplexity for comment on the fundraising rumors and will update this post if we hear back.