Perplexity AI Hits $14 Billion Valuation in Series D Round Led by SoftBank
Amit Yadav
AI-powered search startup Perplexity AI has closed a $500 million Series D funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, pushing its valuation to $14 billion and cementing its position as the most credible challenger to Google Search in the generative AI era.
Perplexity AI has closed a $500 million Series D financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Jeff Bezos, and NVIDIA. The round values the San Francisco-based AI search startup at $14 billion — a near-quadrupling of its valuation from just 18 months ago — and brings its total funding to over $1 billion.
The company has positioned itself as an "answer engine" rather than a traditional search engine, combining real-time web retrieval with large language model synthesis to provide direct, sourced answers rather than a list of blue links. Its mobile app has crossed 50 million monthly active users globally, with particularly strong growth in India, where it recently launched a Hindi-language interface.
CEO Aravind Srinivas said the new capital will accelerate expansion into enterprise search, with Perplexity Pro for Business already piloting at several Fortune 500 companies. The company is also building deeper integrations with productivity tools, including a forthcoming plugin for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
The funding comes as Perplexity navigates legal pressure from major publishers who allege the platform reproduces copyrighted content without attribution or revenue sharing. The company has responded by launching a Publisher Partners programme offering revenue share to media outlets whose content is cited, though critics argue the terms remain unfavourable for smaller outlets.
SoftBank's Masayoshi Son, whose Vision Fund previously made landmark bets on WeWork and Uber, framed the investment as central to the fund's AI-first strategy. "Search is the biggest daily habit of two billion people. Perplexity is reinventing it for the AI generation," Son said in a statement. The deal further validates the growing consensus that the traditional search advertising model is under existential pressure.