The Japanese holding company SoftBank Group Corp. through Vision Fund 2, I intend to provide investments to support the American AI startup Perplexity AI in the field of artificial intelligence. This was reported in a SoftBank press release.
SoftBank plans to provide $10-20 million in a larger funding round of $250 million, which triples Perplexity's market value to over $3 billion and makes it one of the highest-value companies in the sector.
The final agreement has not yet been signed, and the terms of the proposed deal may change.
The deal is aimed at strengthening the business relationship with Perplexity and demonstrates SoftBank's intention to dramatically accelerate the pace of investment in AI in order to develop an artificial superintelligence that is thousands of times smarter than humans. In 2024, SoftBank invested $200 million in Tempus AI startup to create a joint venture in Japan.
In addition, SoftBank plans to invest about $100 billion in the production of AI-based chips as part of the Izanagi project.
Perplexity is a conversational search engine launched in 2022. Perplexity differs from other artificial intelligence chatbots in that it provides more information in real time. Despite the fact that the main service is search, the startup is positioned as a "search engine for answers" because it provides results in text format instead of links. The headquarters is located in San Francisco (California).
SoftBank Group Corp. – a Japanese holding company in the field of telecommunications, marketing, finance, etc. The company is the third largest mobile operator in Japan after NTT Docomo and KDDI. SoftBank owns a controlling stake in the American mobile operator Sprint Corp. and shares in ARM Holdings, Boston Dynamics and Fortress Investment Group.
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