NVIDIA Discusses Equity Investment in Perplexity AI, Accelerating Ecosystem Expansion [Global AI Briefing]

[Financial News] NVIDIA Corporation is reportedly in talks to make an equity investment in Perplexity AI, a platform that has drawn attention as an AI assistant service.
NVIDIA Corporation has recently been investing across the AI industry, including AI model developers, AI agents, open-weight model developers, and AI data centers, as it moves to expand its ecosystem.
According to The Information, a U.S. technology media outlet, on the 24th, NVIDIA Corporation is discussing an investment in the AI startup Perplexity AI.
If the equity funding round is completed, Perplexity AI's valuation is expected to exceed $30 billion, or about 41 trillion won. The company raised $200 million in fresh funding in September last year and was valued at $20 billion, meaning its value would have risen by 50% in just one year.

Founded in 2022, Perplexity AI is a startup that positions itself not as a simple search engine, but as an "answer engine." It recently launched an AI agent service called "Computer" and an AI browser called "Comet." Computer is an AI agent that carries out multiple tasks step by step, such as searching, analyzing, creating content, and writing code, according to user instructions. Comet is an AI browser that goes beyond searching for information inside the browser and directly helps users with web-based tasks.
Along with the launch of its AI agents, Perplexity AI's annual recurring revenue, or ARR, also surged from around $250 million, or about 346 billion won, earlier this year to around $750 million, or about 1 trillion won, recently.
NVIDIA Corporation has long been an early investor in Perplexity AI, and its consideration of an equity investment is drawing fresh attention to the company's strategy for expanding its AI ecosystem.
Recently, NVIDIA Corporation has been increasing investments in companies that build businesses on its hardware. It has built a portfolio spanning AI model developers in the open-weight camp as well as enterprise AI applications. Earlier this month, it signed a $6 billion licensing deal with AI model development software company Poolside and invested $1 billion. At the end of last year, it also acquired the technology of AI inference company Grok and hired many of its team members.
Industry watchers say NVIDIA Corporation is expanding investments in AI startups that buy or lease its chips, strengthening a structure that broadens the AI ecosystem across AI infrastructure, inference, and enterprise AI while boosting demand for NVIDIA's hardware.
[email protected] Lee Gu-soon Reporter