Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals that competed with LinkedIn, has been acquired by AI-powered search engine Perplexity.
As a part of the deal, Read.cv will start to wind down operations Friday. Users will be capable of export their information, together with their profiles, posts, and messages, till May 16.
“We’ve lengthy admired Perplexity and imagine nice issues occur when the world’s data is made extra open and accessible,” reads a publish on Read.cv’s weblog. “In that spirit, we’re thrilled to be becoming a member of the design and engineering staff at Perplexity to proceed in our shared mission of exploration and discovery.”
Today I’m excited to share that @read_cv is becoming a member of the staff at @perplexity_ai of their mission to make the world’s data extra accessible to everybody. This is extremely bittersweet for us, as the beginning of this new chapter will mark the top of our time with @read_cv.
It has… pic.twitter.com/6CUinOEGsi
— andy chung (@_andychung) January 17, 2025
A Perplexity spokesperson confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch through e mail, however supplied no further particulars.
“We’re excited to have the Read.cv staff be a part of Perplexity,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas wrote in a publish on X. “The staff is extremely succesful in designing and constructing client and social experiences and we look ahead to working with them on many new thrilling instructions!”
Read.cv, which was based in 2021 by Andy Chung, beforehand a product designer at Facebook, Mozilla, and Salesforce-owned Quip, supplied a spread of instruments that permit customers share their resumes and chat with different professionals of their industries. Read.cv additionally supplied capabilities aimed toward organizations, like staff profiles and the power to publish job listings and carry out candidate searches.
More just lately, Read.cv launched Sites, a function that allowed customers to publish a private web site utilizing their Read.cv profile. Users may even receive a “.cv” area from Read.cv and join it to their profile, in the event that they wished.
Read.cv says it plans emigrate “.cv” domains beginning January 31 to its companions at Hello.cv, the place customers will be capable of proceed managing them.
Perplexity’s plans for West Berkeley-based Read.cv, which had round three workers and was backed by funding from F7 Ventures and Fanjul Capital, aren’t clear. But Perplexity has more and more invested in corporate-focused performance, final summer time launching an enterprise plan with consumer administration, “inner data search,” and extra.
The strikes might be partly on the behest of the VCs backing Perplexity, who’re little question wanting to see a return earlier than later. Perplexity has reportedly raised over $500 million in capital from buyers, together with Institutional Venture Partners, and is claimed to be valued at $9 billion.
Read.cv is Perplexity’s third acquisition following its buy of Carbon, which makes a speciality of connecting AI techniques to exterior information sources. In 2023, Perplexity acquired Spellwise, whose CEO was introduced on to develop Perplexity’s cellular app.
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