Perplexity AI is setting up a $50 million venture fund to invest in early-stage artificial intelligence (AI) startups in the United States.
The majority of the funding will come from external investors, but Perplexity itself will also contribute, using some of the capital it previously raised for its own expansion.
The fund will be managed by Kelly Graziadei and Joanna Lee Shevelenko, who previously co-founded the venture firm F7 Ventures. It’s still unknown if they will continue their involvement with F7 or shift their full focus to Perplexity’s investment initiative.
This comes shortly after Perplexity secured $500 million in funding last December, tripling its valuation to $9 billion. The investment round included backing from SoftBank, Nvidia, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Perplexity is not the only AI company with a dedicated investment fund. OpenAI also runs the OpenAI Startup Fund but has stated that it does not invest its own money, unlike Perplexity.
Added to its investment, Perplexity has been expanding its product lineup. The AI search engine developer recently introduced ‘Deep Research,’ a feature for generating in-depth AI-driven reports, and is developing a web browser named Comet, for which users can now join a waitlist.
The AI sector is attracting high venture capital. A report from HSBC Innovation Banking revealed that 42% of all U.S. venture capital investments in 2024 went into AI startups, compared to 36% in 2023 and 22% in 2022.
“Venture capital has always gravitated toward transformative industries, but the level of consolidation we’re seeing within one category is unprecedented,” said Dave Sabow, gead of HSBC U.S. Innovation Banking.
“The radical change this investment will fuel places us in the dawn of ‘The Agentic Age,’ an era where autonomous artificial intelligence capabilities fundamentally redefine how we communicate, work and interface with digital and physical worlds.”
In recent months, AI and robotics startups have been raising funds. Figure, a company developing humanoid robots, is reportedly in talks to secure $1.5 billion in Series C funding.
Lambda, a cloud AI firm, has raised $480 million, while Together.ai, which focuses on open-source AI models, has secured $305 million in Series B funding.
Peter Oluka