Masayoshi Son "favors" Perplexity! A bold bet on the "Google Killer" to become the dominant force in the AI search field

According to the financial news app Zhitong Finance, SoftBank Group Corp.'s Vision Fund 2, which focuses on new technologies in the field of science and technology, has invested up to $3 billion in the latest round of financing in Perplexity AI, a U.S. artificial intelligence startup focusing on "AI search," at a valuation of $30 billion. This investment by SoftBank in Perplexity is seen as the latest bet by the SoftBank Group under the leadership of Masayoshi Son on the crucial subfield of "super artificial intelligence," with Son betting that Perplexity may become the strongest leader in the forefront of "AI search." In Son's view, SoftBank Group's mission is to help human society progress by realizing the vision of "super artificial intelligence" (ASI).

According to sources familiar with the matter, SoftBank plans to invest $10-20 million in this startup company. Perplexity, an AI startup, aims to compete fiercely with Alphabet Inc.'s Google search engine by offering ad-free, efficient AI search powered by artificial intelligence technology.

It is understood that the latest round of financing of up to $250 million has doubled Perplexity's valuation, making it one of the highest valued startups in the global AI field.

Perplexity, known as the "Google Killer," surprisingly became the favorite AI tool of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. When asked in an interview this year, "Do you use ChatGPT or Google AI chatbots frequently, or do you use other products?" Huang replied, "I generally use Perplexity, and I use it almost every day. For example, when I recently wanted to understand how AI assists in drug development, I used Perplexity for related searches."

This financing deal highlights SoftBank's readiness to significantly accelerate its investments in artificial intelligence. SoftBank billionaire founder Masayoshi Son presented a grand vision for the future of artificial intelligence last week, including a commitment to achieve what he calls "super artificial intelligence." Son talked about his desire to create artificial intelligence systems that are thousands of times smarter than humans, making it the grandest statement since SoftBank briefly exited the venture capital market after a series of untimely bets on startups.

"We've done a lot of things, but all of these are just warm-ups for what I need to do to achieve my dream of super artificial intelligence," he told investors at the annual shareholder meeting last Friday. "This is what I was born to do."

Sources say that the deal is not yet finalized, and the terms are subject to change. Representatives from Perplexity and SoftBank declined to comment on the transaction. TechCrunch previously reported some details of this financing.

What is Perplexity, even Jensen Huang is using it? SoftBank's proposed equity investment may consolidate its existing business cooperation with Perplexity. This year, the AI startup announced a partnership to provide free subscriptions for up to one year to SoftBank's Japanese wireless customers. This arrangement deepens Perplexity's connection with the Japanese market, helping to rapidly promote the company's AI search technology in Japan, which is one of Perplexity's largest markets in Asia.

Perplexity, which has been on the market for less than two years, differs from other AI chatbots in its ability to provide more real-time information and an ad-free AI search interface deeply integrated with AI technology. While its main service is AI search, the startup refers to itself as an "answer engine" because it provides finely integrated search results in a textual format after AI large model integration, and details the links on which the search results are based, rather than just displaying the links found like Google search engine does.

Data shows that Perplexity, which is as popular as ChatGPT, is an emerging generative AI-driven conversational search engine launched in December 2022. Its design goal is to provide direct answers to user queries through a chatbot-style interface and integrate large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to generate responses.

Perplexity AI not only generates detailed and refined answers but also includes footnotes citing sources, making it easy for users to verify the accuracy of information. While Google search engine mainly provides a list of links for users to click on to get detailed information, with users having to explore the final results themselves, Perplexity directly provides users with the answers they want to know or detailed introductions to things they want to understand based on cited links and AI large model technology.

Perplexity is committed to providing users with a reliable search experience, reducing the "hallucination" phenomenon of large language models (LLMs) (i.e., incorrect absurd outputs). It ensures the accuracy and security of information through built-in content filtering and human annotations. Perplexity offers an interactive chatbot-like way for users to engage in multi-round conversations, review past search records in detail, refine AI query results, optimize AI chatbots through progressive chat boxes to obtain reasoning answers with continuously improving accuracy, and aims to provide real-time updates of the latest information to ensure the timeliness and accuracy of answers Masayoshi Son's "AI Ambition": Striving to Create Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)

It is expected that SoftBank will accelerate its pace in entering the field of artificial intelligence software services. This year, the group directly invested $200 million in Tempus AI, a startup analyzing medical data using AI. They now plan to establish a joint technology company in Japan.

At the SoftBank shareholders' meeting last week, Masayoshi Son declared that he is ready to go all-in in the field of artificial intelligence, regardless of the outcome. Last Friday, Son went further to boast that everything SoftBank has done so far has been preparation for realizing the AI dream, with the group's goal being to create "artificial superintelligence."

He predicts that artificial superintelligence may emerge within 10 years, with capabilities thousands of times greater than humans. Son stated, "SoftBank has done a lot of things so far, all of which are warm-ups for my great dream of achieving artificial intelligence."

Masayoshi Son's grand plan is to build "artificial superintelligence." He claims that the company's chips will support an ecosystem consisting of embodied robots and powerful data centers that can treat cancer and even drive technological innovation.

According to media reports in February this year, SoftBank plans to invest around $100 billion in AI-related chip companies in a super AI chip project called "Izanagi." Last week, when a shareholder inquired about "Izanagi," Masayoshi Son stated that he is committed to achieving results and will strive to reach his set goals, but did not provide detailed explanations