Perplexity Acquires Carbon: Seamlessly Integrate AI Search with Your Work Files for Enhanced Productivity

Perplexity Acquires Carbon to Enhance AI Search Capabilities

Source: TechCrunch

Overview of the Acquisition

• Perplexity has acquired Carbon, a Seattle-based startup focused on enhancing AI systems through external data integration.
• Aravind Srinivasan, CEO of Perplexity, suggests this acquisition will allow users to search their files across popular platforms like Notion, Google Docs, and Slack by early 2025.

Carbon's Technology and Its Implications

• Carbon specializes in retrieval augmented generation (RAG), facilitating access to external databases for large language models.
• This integration is expected to streamline enterprise search products, enabling quick queries through vast unstructured data warehouses.

Competitive Landscape

• The enterprise AI search sector is becoming increasingly competitive, with players like Glean gaining significant traction.
• OpenAI and Google have also begun developing similar enterprise search tools, indicating a growing interest in this market segment.

Previous Acquisitions and Future Prospects

• This marks Perplexity's second acquisition, following its 2023 purchase of Spellwise.
• Leveraging Carbon's expertise may enhance Perplexity's capabilities in delivering robust enterprise solutions.