Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. has invested around 150 billion won ($110 million) in Perplexity AI Inc., an AI-driven search engine developer, at a valuation of $20 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter on Thursday.
The South Korean asset manager backed the Ai startup through its US arm, joining Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Telecom Co. as shareholders in the San Francisco-based tech company.
The size of Perplexity’s latest fundraising was not disclosed.
The enterprise value of Perplexity, a strong rival to Google Inc., compares to the $18 billion esimated during its fundraising in July.
Founded in 2022, Perplexity combines real-time web search with large language models (LLMs) to answer user questions.
Last year, Samsung Electronics Co.’s US investment arm Samsung Next invested an undisclosed sum in Perplexity AI, while SK Telecom, South Korea’s top mobile carrier, committed $10 million to the generative AI search engine firm.
Following the investment, SK has joined hands with Perplexity to incorporate the US tech firm’s search engine into its AI assistant platform A Dot.
Since raising $25.6 million in a series A funding round in 2023, Perplexity drew $73.6 million from global venture capital firms, including Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), in early 2024 at a valuation of $500 million.
Nvidia Corp. and Jeff Bezos, founder and former CEO of Amazon, have funded the startup, of which annualized revenue surpassed $100 million as of March.
Mirae Asset is the most aggressive investor in AI companies among Korean financial services groups.
It has invested in Korea’s AI chip designer Rebellions Inc. and the LLM-based AI model developer Upstage, as well as AI-based advertising companies Moloco Inc., via Mirae Asset Venture Investments.
Last year, Mirae Asset founder and Chairman Park Hyeon-joo said the group aims to implement an intelligent organization-wide AI platform to offer various investment products at much lower fees.
By Dae-Eun Choi
max@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article.
