"A vision to rebuild TikTok in the United States." The ambition displayed by Perplexity in a press release is great. Surely to support it and demonstrate that it has the shoulders to do it, the startup backed by Amazon and Softbank is currently holding preliminary discussions for a fundraising.
According to a source close to the matter who spoke to Reuters, Perplexity is thus on the verge of being valued at $18 billion (nearly €17 billion). The funding round would raise between $500 million and $1 billion (between €463 million and €926 million). In November, the British news agency had already reported a first transaction that was expected to lead to a valuation of $9 billion (around €8 billion).
While this growth is enough to make people envious, it especially supports the ambitions of the merger offer with TikTok, made by Perplexity in January. Blocked in the United States for a few hours at the beginning of the year, the social network owned by ByteDance is attracting the interest of many American companies. Between Oracle, Microsoft, and a consortium of investors including Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, and Franck McCourt, owner of Olympique de Marseille, the competition is fierce.
« The best search bar in the world »
To stand out, Perplexity seeks to position itself as a guarantee of independence. « Any acquisition by a group of investors could result in ByteDance retaining control of the algorithm, while an acquisition by a competitor could create a monopoly in the short-form video and news sector,” Perplexity said in its press release.
Perplexity thus maintains that it wants to “rebuild TikTok’s algorithm from the ground up with transparency as its guiding principle,” promising to transform the social network into the “most neutral and reliable platform in the world.”. Noble values that could inspire its current investors.
To do this, Perplexity indicates that it will not only "develop new algorithms, it will also open source the TikTok code of the For You feed.". The startup also stated that it wants to strengthen the reliability of content by adding sources to facilitate fact-checking. And, more generally, it claims to be able to increase the network's performance with "the best search bar in the world" and optimized recommendations.
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