Perplexity acquires Carbon to connect AI search to your work files

Perplexity acquired a small Seattle-based startup referred to as Carbon which makes a speciality of connecting AI programs to exterior information sources, the companies announced on Wednesday. CEO Aravind Srinivasan says this may enable Perplexity to go looking by way of your information and work messages in Notion, Google Docs, Slack, and different enterprise purposes someday in early 2025.

Carbon makes a speciality of retrieval augmented technology, or RAG, which permits giant language fashions to entry info from exterior databases earlier than it generates a solution. By bringing Carbon’s expertise and employees on board, Perplexity might be opening the door to launching enterprise search merchandise. These instruments join generative AI to enterprise databases, permitting staff to rapidly search by way of the mass of unstructured information their corporations have acquired through the years.

“Carbon will make it simpler for Perplexity’s reply engine to be told by various sources of knowledge, whether or not that information resides in inside databases, cloud storage, or doc repositories,” mentioned Perplexity in a press release.

Enterprise AI search is rapidly changing into a aggressive house within the AI world. OpenAI reportedly instructed traders in its newest $6.6 billion spherical that they could not also invest in Glean, the current front runner in enterprise search. Glean has reportedly impressed OpenAI, Google, and a number of other different AI giants to develop their very own enterprise search merchandise – and maybe they’ve impressed Perplexity as nicely.

That is Perplexity’s second acquisition, following its 2023 acquisition of Spellwise, whose CEO was introduced on to develop Perplexity’s cellular app.