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Afterannouncinga strategical partnership with SoftBank in April , Perplexity — the AI search engine that has ambitions to take on Google — is now using the deal to expand its user base , and data touchpoints , in SoftBank ’s home market of Japan . SoftBank and two of its mobile operations , Y!mobile ( SoftBank ’s nomadic phone hustler ) and LINEMO ( SoftBank ’s lowly - cost Mobile River web carrier),plan to offerfree , one - year subscriptions to Perplexity ’s premium tier , Perplexity Pro , get down June 19 .
This move underscoresPerplexity’sinternational ambition and its focusing on beget tax revenue from its pay tier , but also the need of companies like mobile carriers .
They may not have the teams or appetite ( or funds ) in - house to build their own AI models and services on top of them . But with AI buzz still at an all - clock time high , tying up with AI companies is one way of life to pull in more substance abuser concerned in using more AI . It ’s also potentially a route to pick up more customer and revenues ; and finally , it gives SoftBank a opportunity to potentially work with Perplexity on other services leveraging AI . ( In that regard , it ’s not different to the deals that companies like Spotify ink in its early days with mobile carriers to expand its home of premium users . )
SoftBank is not the only carrier working with Perplexity . The startup inked a partnership with Germany ’s Deutsche Telekom that was announced at the same time as the pot with SoftBank , in April 2024 .
It ’s not clear if either carrier is adorn in Perplexity with this deal , but SoftBank has made AI a big focus of its ambitions .
The Vision Fund has been scent around a number of AI startups , with its name attached to a bit of possible deals ( includingOpenAIandMistral , although it has not invested formally yet in either ) . Separately , the laminitis and CEO of the SoftBank Group , Masayoshi Son , is appear to build a$100 billion AI chip speculation ; and SoftBank , perhaps not coincidently , has beenlinked as a potential buyer for Graphcore in the U.K.
Alongside all that , SoftBank ’s Japan business last year launched its own Japanese - language Large Language Model venture , SB Intuitions .
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It ’s not clear how well that has pass on — not least since so many of the most challenging and advanced LLM player are well into building their own model across different language group . In any lawsuit , SoftBank take note that with the Pro tier up of Perplexity , users have the option of pick out whatever LLM they want to power their search enquiry .
In April , the San Francisco - based startup said it had closed$62.7 million in financial support , valuing it at $ 1 billion , which had doubled from three months ago . TechCrunch has also reportedthat the company is currently raising other capital — at least $ 250 million at a valuation of between $ 2.5 billion and $ 3 billion . Its current list of investor let in Bezos Expeditions , IVP , NEA , Sequoia , Nvidia and Databricks , along with a number of big individuals .
Perplexity , which can be used in vane browsers and applications , provide answer establish on the latest web search . Perplexity hascome under firefrom publishers over how work is credited in answers ( or not , as the case may be ) . The startupsays it is workingon revenue - sharing deals .
Perplexity Pro , a subscription - based military service , offers user access to the advanced version of Perplexity . For example , it enables users to freely select from the tardy large voice communication example ( LLMs ) to benefit from more comprehensive entropy hunting and datum processing capabilities . In accession , the upgraded Perplexity version offers a feature of speech for bring forth high - quality images in various styles based on search histories and an AI visibility feature that customise lookup result and provides support through chat - based cock .
The iOS version of the app is presently priced at 3,000 hankering per month and 30,000 yen per class . The web version price are $ 20 per calendar month and $ 200 per year as of the same date .
SoftBank confirmed to TechCrunch that it has not invested in Perplexity via the strategical partnership deal . A spokesperson at SoftBank did not furnish further details on its plans .
