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Perplexity is in talks to raise again, as the battle for second in the AI chatbot race heats up

The latest funding round could peg Perplexity at a $14 billion valuation.

5/14/25 5:56AM

Like a lot of AI startups, Perplexity isn’t having a hard time finding new investors.

According to exclusive reporting by The Wall Street Journal, the company is in closing talks for a new $500 million funding round that would see it valued at a whopping $14 billion. For context on just how quickly valuations are still soaring in the AI sphere, Perplexity closed a funding round in November that saw its valuation reach $9 billion… which was already triple what the startup was worth just six months before that.

Though it’s certainly had its critics, the company’s eponymous AI search engine has proved popular since its release in late 2022, while plans to launch Comet — an AI-powered browser that could land as soon as this month — clearly have investors excited as well. In the ever-expanding universe of AI tools and chatbots, though, OpenAI’s star still shines brightest.

ChatGPT domination chart — Sherwood News

ChatGPT has been breaking its own traffic records every month of the year so far, hitting an almighty 780 million visits from American users in April, while web-based versions of other AI efforts have yet to build anywhere near as much steam. Indeed, discounting rivals from Big Tech giants like Meta’s new MetaAI platform or Google’s Gemini, ChatGPT really is a deus amid machinas, clocking over 8.5x more April site visits than the web versions of DeepSeek, Perplexity, Anthropic’s Claude, and Elon Musk’s Grok combined.

Among those chatbots and AI search engines not set up by Sam Altman or trillion-dollar tech companies, DeepSeek — the Chinese startup whose R1 model rocked AI stocks in January — leads the way, though it has lost momentum more recently.

AI platform visits chart — Sherwood News

Since DeepSeek burst onto the scene, causing a flurry of hurried explainers and inspiring a wave of online evangelists, tens of millions have flocked to sample the chatbot, reportedly built at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI’s flagship model. Still, monthly visit numbers are slipping from the February peak of 43 million.

Jon Keegan2/13/26

Ahead of IPO, Anthropic adds veteran executive and former Trump administration official to board

Anthropic is moving to put the pieces in place for a successful IPO this year.

Today, the company announced that Chris Liddel would join its board of directors.

Liddel is an seasoned executive who previously served as CFO for Microsoft, GM, and International Paper.

Liddel also comes with experience in government, having served as the deputy White House chief of staff during the first Trump administration.

Ties to the Trump world could be helpful for Anthropic as it pushes to enter the public market. It’s reportedly not on the greatest terms with the current administration, as the startup has pushed back on using its Claude AI for surveillance applications.

Exclusive | Anthropic Adds New Board Member as It Eyes IPO

Liddel is an seasoned executive who previously served as CFO for Microsoft, GM, and International Paper.

Liddel also comes with experience in government, having served as the deputy White House chief of staff during the first Trump administration.

Rani Molla2/13/26

Meta is bringing back facial recognition for its smart glasses

Meta is reviving its highly controversial facial recognition efforts, with plans to incorporate the tech into its smart glasses as soon as this year, The New York Times reports.

In 2021, around the time Facebook rebranded as Meta, the company shut down the facial recognition software it had used to tag people in photos, saying it needed to “find the right balance.”

Now, according to an internal memo reviewed by the Times, Meta seems to feel that it’s at least found the right moment, noting that the fraught and crowded political climate could allow the feature to attract less scrutiny.

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” the document reads.

The tech, called “Name Tag” internally, would let smart glass wearers identify and surface information about people they see with the glasses by using Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” the document reads.

The tech, called “Name Tag” internally, would let smart glass wearers identify and surface information about people they see with the glasses by using Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

Tom Jones

the elder scrolls

2/13/26

Older Americans are spending more time on their phones than younger cohorts, per new data

Some members of the TikTok generation are (very slightly) less glued to their phones than other adults, it turns out.

A man, a woman and a child with a phone instead of a head

Rani Molla

2/13/26

Apple doesn’t have an AI spending problem. It has an AI execution problem.

Apple isn’t falling far from the AI tree.

Super Bowl LX: New England Patriots v Seattle Seahawks

Jon Keegan2/12/26

Anthropic raises $30 billion, now valued at $380 billion

Anthropic is now valued at $380 billion, after closing on its latest round of fundraising, taking in $30 billion from a wide range of investors. The Series G round was co-led by D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, and the UAE’s investment arm, MGX.

Some other investors include: Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, JPMorgan Chase, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Microsoft, and Nvidia.

Anthropic offered a few details on the current state of its business:

Anthropic said that its annual run-rate revenue has reached $14 billion, seeing 10x growth each of the past three years.
“The number of customers spending over $100,000 annually on Claude (as represented by run-rate revenue) has grown 7x in the past year.”
“Claude Code’s run-rate revenue has grown to over $2.5 billion; this figure has more than doubled since the beginning of 2026.”
Business subscriptions to Claude Code have quadrupled since the start of 2026.

In a blog post announcing the round, the company said:

“We train and run Claude on a diversified range of AI hardware — AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and NVIDIA GPUs — which means we can match workloads to the chips best suited for them. This diversity of platforms translates to better performance and greater resilience for the enterprise customers that depend on Claude for critical work.”

Anthropic raises $30 billion in Series G funding at $380 billion post-money valuation