Perplexity acquired a small Seattle-based startup referred to as Carbon which focuses on connecting AI techniques to exterior knowledge sources, the businesses introduced on Wednesday. CEO Aravind Srinivasan says this can enable Perplexity to go looking by way of your recordsdata and work messages in Notion, Google Docs, Slack, and different enterprise purposes someday in early 2025.
Carbon focuses on retrieval augmented technology, or RAG, which permits massive language fashions to entry data from exterior databases earlier than it generates a solution. By bringing Carbon’s know-how and workers on board, Perplexity could possibly be opening the door to launching enterprise search merchandise. These instruments join generative AI to enterprise databases, permitting staff to shortly search by way of the mass of unstructured knowledge their corporations have acquired over time.
“Carbon will make it simpler for Perplexity’s reply engine to be told by numerous sources of knowledge, whether or not that knowledge resides in inner databases, cloud storage, or doc repositories,” mentioned Perplexity in an announcement.
Enterprise AI search is shortly changing into a aggressive house within the AI world. OpenAI reportedly instructed traders in its newest $6.6 billion spherical that they may not additionally put money into Glean, the present frontrunner in enterprise search. Glean has reportedly impressed OpenAI, Google, and a number of other different AI giants to develop their very own enterprise search merchandise — and maybe they’ve impressed Perplexity as nicely.
This is Perplexity’s second acquisition, following its 2023 acquisition of Spellwise, whose CEO was introduced on to develop Perplexity’s cell app.
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