SoftBank to invest in search startup Perplexity AI at $3 billion valuation, Bloomberg reports

(Reuters) -Japanese technology investor SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund 2 is investing between $10 million and $20 million in U.S. search startup Perplexity AI at a valuation of $3 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

SoftBank will make this investment as part of a larger $250 million funding round, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The deal hasn't been finalized and its terms could still change, it said.

Perplexity declined to comment, while SoftBank did not respond to a Reuters' request for comment.

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 that can sum up and generate information, from OpenAI to Meta's open-source model Llama.

San Francisco, California-based Perplexity AI in January raised $73.6 million from a group of investors including Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at a valuation of $520 million.

The company had earlier said it served more than 500 million queries in 2023 while spending few marketing dollars.

(Reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)