Attention Google—Perplexity AI logged over 500 million search queries in 2023 and just put $74M in its pocket to disrupt your market position
Google Slayer: Perplexity’s CEO Aravind Srinivas.
Bill Gates catches the Apple falling from the tree
Most of us forget, but in 1997, when Steve Jobs took back the reigns of the company he co-founded, Apple was essentially bankrupt. That year, Apple’s worldwide market share fell from 5.2% to 3.1% and from 6.6% to 4.3% in the US, and its stock was at an all-time 10-year low. To save the company, Steve mesmerized his long-time nemesis, Bill Gates, enough to get Microsoft to bail out the company by investing $150 million in Apple on August 6, 1997. Steve’s little bit of leverage, at the time, was Microsoft was making some money selling Office apps for the Mac set.
In a PR stunt that only Steve Jobs could pull off, he somehow got a Time magazine photographer to take a photo of him taking a mobile call from Bill Gates to close the deal, whereby he thanks Bill for ‘making the world a better place.’ The translation of that Jobsian retort is, of course, ‘Thanks for saving our ass, Bill! See you all at the finish line!’
Steve Jobs wanted the world to know that Apple was going to make it. Time magazine cover, August 18, 1997,
Steve ended up running across the finish line on May 26, 2010, when Apple became more valuable than Microsoft for the first time. Since 2011, Apple has been the most valuable company in the world, and its market capitalization has broken the $3 trillion mark. Microsft might have lost the race, but if they are still holding its Apple stock, it would show a 1,085x return, meaning the $150 million invested would be worth $162.8 billion today. There are many classic Silicon Valley-style David and Goliath stories, but none with the irony and intrigue than that of the great Job vs. Gates match-up.
When you read the post linked above, you will see we had a good instinct back in 2000 at the launch of the Mac OSX that Apple was about to ascend to new heights, and Bill had a formidable new contender on his hands. Those same instincts tell us that a new David has arrived in the Valley, and their slingshot is aimed at the much-mistrusted Google Goliath.
Introducing Perplexity AI
San Francisco-based Perplexity AI has closed $73.6 million, led by the venerable IVP and a swarm of investors, including Nvidia, NEA, Databricks, Bessemer, and Kindred Ventures. Notably, several individual tech luminaries are also in the deal, including Jeff Bezos, former X VP Elad Gil, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, and Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch. The round valued the company at about $520 million.
Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, previously worked at OpenAI, where he researched language and GenAI models along the lines of Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 3. He and his cofounders, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, launched the company in August 2022. They lead a team of developers and engineers from OpenAI, Meta, Quora, and Databricks.
Perplexity’s search engine went live in December 2022 and, by December 2023, had organically boomed to 10 million active monthly users, 45 million monthly visits, 500 million search queries (50% of Microsoft Bing Chat), and more than a million mobile app users. The company plans to use the funding to hire and build the products. It now has 38 people and plans to reach about 60 by the end of this year.
We favor Perplexity search over other AI-native search tools because the experience is conversational yet more comprehensive, articulate, and less judgmental than ChatGPT and comes with source citation buttons so users can dig deeper. It’s a more academic reference approach that is filtered and grounded to referenced facts rather than making stuff along the way like the other bots.
Perplexity’s technology advantage is it can fine-tune a variety of top-performing AI models, from OpenAI to Meta’s open-source model Llama, instead of locking into one.
'Google will be viewed as something that's legacy and old, and Perplexity's AI-native experience will be perceived as the next generation and the future,' exudes Aravind.
Perplexity’s basic search is free. The Pro version, billed at $20/month, allows users to choose the model of choice, including GPT-4, for better results and access to Perplexity API credits to integrate cutting-edge open-source LLMs into your projects and unlimited querying support for its Perplexity Copilot—the interactive research assistant of the company.
One major challenge for Perplexity is AI models are costly to run. It has been reported that OpenAI was spending approximately $700,000 per day to keep up with the demand for ChatGPT. Microsoft is also reportedly losing an average of $20 per user per month on Bing Chat. Pursuing an open source service fee and subscription model is a very different game from the Google model of selling their users' data. It's a more honorable model, to be sure, but we will all have to see how the profit margins pan out over the next few years.
Elon vs. Aravind on AI
‘For the first time, we will have something that is smarter than the smartest human. It's hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed—you can have a job if you want to have a job for sort of personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything.’
‘In an era where misinformation and AI hallucinations are causing increasing concern, we’re built on the idea that accuracy and transparency are prerequisites to making AI-powered search ubiquitous. The times of sifting through SEO spam, sponsored links, and multiple web pages will be replaced by a much more efficient model of knowledge acquisition and sharing, propelling our society into a new era of accelerated learning and research.’
—Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Perplexity
Copilot tailors search queries with custom follow-up questions, introducing the concept of generative user interfaces. 'This enables users to gain more relevant and comprehensive answers than other AI chatbots, traditional search engines, or research tools,' explains Aravind.
Perplexity's open-source model, plus its clever and invaluable Copilot assistant, will inspire people to turn the page on Google. Simply put, a generative user interface like Copilot will spare the user from pinging all around the web and actually make research almost conversational and fun—A great way to achieve Perplexity's mission 'to serve the entire planet's unbounded curiosity.' We like the way Aravind thinksand bet Perplexity ultimately wounds and slays the Google Goliath.
‘AI should not be like AI Samantha from the 2013 movie Her.’
—Aravind Srinivas, cofounder of Perplexity AI
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Elon: Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism. Shame on anyone who uses it.
Cuban: When companies do DEI well, you see a well-run, successful company. By extending our hiring search to include them, we can find people who are more qualified. The loss of DEI-phobic companies is my gain.
Elon: ‘Cool, so when should we expect to see short white/Asian women on the Mavs?
Cuban didn’t immediately respond to Musk’s reply.
Future Dallas Maverick? The Women’s Asia Cup 2023 champion and Player of the Year, China’s 6-foot ace Li Meng, joins WNBA’s Washington Mystics.
Despite a NASDAQ comeback in 2023, the VCs had a challenging year, with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, rate hikes, an idle IPO market, and a life of pounding down rounds.
Global venture investments declined 42% to $248B last year, the lowest level since 2017, according to CB Insights. The number of deals also tumbled by 30% to 29,303. Last year, 71 startups reached valuations of $1 billion or more, 73% fewer than the 263 companies that reached` unicorn status in 2022. IPOs for global VC-backed startups hit their lowest in a decade.
With the IPO market frozen, VCs are shying away from mega deals and putting more focus on early-stage companies. The investment sectors that saw VC investments grow in Q4 were GenAI, sustainable tech, retail, and fintech startups.
A Pitchbook analysis predicts that open-source GenAI ‘orchestration projects,’ such as those in the chart below, which offer services that help developers integrate and manage generative AI models, is the new hot AI category.
As more startups look to cut down on costs by opting for cheaper open-source models than OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, orchestration startups allow users to access multiple models and route tasks and queries wherever they choose. Orchestration startup Anyscale has raised a total of roughly $260M from Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Intel Capital and is used by OpenAI and others for the development, training, and fine-tuning of AI.
Anyscale co-founders Robert Nishihara, Ion Stoica, and Philipp Moritz created the company out of a research lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
‘There is this continuously growing gap between the demands of these [LLM] applications and the abilities of hardware,’ says Ion Stoica, cofounder and executive chair of Anyscale and cofounder of Databrick. ‘LLMs have now far surpassed compute demands.’
It looks like the future of Paramount—and the entire power structure of Hollywood, for that matter— is still in flux, with rumors of suiters and high-level meetings being bantered about all over Tinseltown. As the Hollywood Reporter skillfully reported, the list players in the mix are a cast of characters straight out of central casting, including three nepo babies trying to keep step with their mogul fathers—Shari Redstone (Paramount), David Ellison (Skydance Media), and Brian Roberts (Comcast)—and two self-made billionaire investors, John Malone (major shareholder in WBD) and Warren Buffett (the most significant economic stake in Paramount) who have stakes in the debt-laden companies at the heart of the deal.
For Redstone, selling the company would be about securing whatever cash she can from her father’s empire but also letting her forge her new legacy of ‘investing in media, technology, and web3 startups’ under her VC fund, Advancit Capital.
The ‘streamflation’ era is upon us. Entertainment streaming customer cancellations rose to 6.3% in November, from 5.1% the year prior—due primarily to price hikes. Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Peacock, Paramount+, Hulu, and Apple TV+ all upped prices in 2023. ‘Consumers should expect to be hit with more price hikes, password sharing limits, and enticed with ad-supported options,’ says Scott Purdy, U.S. media leader for KPMG.
‘There are a lot of companies doing it [streaming], and you need fewer companies, or you need higher prices, or it doesn’t work, says Mr. Buffett, in case you were wondering. ‘You’ve got a bunch of companies that don’t want to quit. Who knows what pricing does under that?’
The Tesla Model Y and BYD Atto 3 are two of the most popular SUVs on the market. The most significant difference is the price—$65K for the Tesla SUV and $51K for the BYD one.
BYD cars are not sold in the US, despite not being banned from doing so and the backing of American investment guru Warren Buffett. However, tariffs that benefit US carmakers make it not worthwhile for BYD to sell cars in the US.
Best on the Block
US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced an agreement to buy an unnamed holding company that holds a Mifid II license, allowing Coinbase to offer regulated crypto-linked derivatives, like futures, in the EU, in addition to spot trading in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that it already provides. Derivatives account for roughly 75% of overall crypto trading volumes.
Brazil’s largest bank by total assets, Itaú Unibanco, listened to 85% of its clients in a survey last year and is launching a Bitcoin trading service as part of its investment platform. In the future, the bank plans to add more cryptocurrencies for trading, according to the bank’s digital asset head, Guto Antunes.
Brazil gets Real about digital currencies. The country’s CBDC—Drex—has been tested since 2020 and is going to see a more extensive rollout in 2024.
The news comes as Itaú Unibanco and Brazil’s other big lenders—including BTG Pactual and Santander Brasil—are reportedly ramping up in preparation for the nationwide rollout of the digital Brazilian real, called the Drex.
Maybe cool new immersive TVs will help give a needed boost to the entertainment business. Samsung’s new, very sweet, minimalistic TV designs were unveiled today at CES 2024 with AI tech-enhanced 8K upscaling, optimized motion, and fine-tuned pictures based on not just the show or movie you’re watching but on specific scenes, with a 98-inch screen size option.
FCO?🤔 Crypto investing platform Raiser is partnering with Visa-backed metaverse platform Playbux to raise $150,000 via a ‘fair’ community token offering (FCO) rather than the now-dated ICO or IEO. Under an FCO, Raiser assists Playbux in ranking its users by on-chain activity, such as the number of followers and referrals, and top users have a chance to invest in some amount of a project’s token before its listing on centralized exchanges.
Raiser’s FCO process lets crypto startups meet these more rigorous listing requirements while offering pre-listing token access to community members who may be less keen to sell their tokens on listing day, says Raiser cofounder Kori Leon. Playbox was part of Binance Labs’ incubation program and was added to Visa’s Asia Pacific 2023 accelerator program. The metaverse-focused platform makes money by offering shop-to-earn experiences and customizable avatars.
Space Shots
Two private companies, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology and Houston-based Intuitive Machines,are helping the US get back into the moon shot game. There have been three lunar landings by China in the last decade— including on the moon’s far side—and India landed on the moon last summer. Japan will become the fifth country to pull off a lunar landing in two weeks if the Japanese Space Agency’s lander with two toy-size rovers makes it to the moon. Russia and the U.S. did it repeatedly in the 1960s and 70s, but only the U.S. has put astronauts on the moon.
The Griffin lunar lander that delivered NASA’s water-hunting VIPER rover to the lunar south pole in 2023
Astrobotic Technology has plans for the liftoff of a lander this week aboard the new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. Intuitive Machines aims to launch a lander in mid-February, hopping a flight with SpaceX. It’s part of a NASA-supported effort to kick-start commercial moon deliveries, as the space agency focuses on getting astronauts back there. ‘They’re scouts going to the moon ahead of us,’ said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Polaris’ lunar rover can carry 90 kg of payload mass, traverse long distances, communicate directly with Earth, and accommodate diverse lunar missions like lunar regolith digging or water ice harvesting.
Robots
A just revealed injury report shows that back in 2021, a Tesla robot programmed to grab and move freshly cast aluminum car parts, unfortunately, grabbed and attacked a Giga Texas factory engineer instead. The engineer was programming two Tesla robots nearby when the robot suddenly pinned him and sank its metal claws into his back and arm, leaving an ‘open wound’ on his left hand.
Not to make light of this horrible assault, the incident has more than a splash of irony to it, as Elon has long forecasted that Robots would take over the world and us lowly humans.
We are currently headed towards a state where machines will make more decisions for us and take control of us in ways we can't turn off. It would happen like Terminator—except the intelligence will be in the data centers—but the robots will be the end effectors, and some will be moving so fast that you won't be able to see them without a strobe light."
—Elon Musk, on the Joe Rogan Experience in April 2023
Kim Ju Ae, the 10-year-old daughter of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who made her first public appearance a year ago, is the likely heir apparent, says South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS). Kim Ju Ae would be the first female ruler since the creation of North Korea in 1948, which was led by her great-grandfather (Kim Il Sung d. 1994), then her grandfather (Kim Jong Il d. 2011), and now her father. NIS believes she is the oldest of two children.
Mini-Me’s first public debut was in November 2022, when Ju Ae watched a long-range missile test launch with her father.
The girl has since accompanied her father to a slew of major public events, with state media full of photos and footage calling her Kim Jong Un’s ‘most beloved’ or ‘respected’ child. NIS views Kim Ju Ae as her father’s likely successor based on an analysis of her public activities and the state protocols provided to her.
Foreign Policy magazine has referred to Kim Yo-Jong, 36, as the ‘most dangerous woman in the world.’ Here, she is pictured with previous South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
Meanwhile, the other woman in Kim Jong Un’s life, his powerful sister, Kim Yo-Jong, who is a senior official in the state propaganda ministry, has been deriding South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for his ‘foolishly brave and fanatical military confrontation posture.’ She contrasted Yoon Suk Yeol with his ‘very smart’ liberal predecessor, Moon Jae-in, rhetoric clearly meant to help stoke political divisions in South Korea.
The immediate slap-down of a Putin critic is evidence that no war dissent will be tolerated in the campaign. Ms Duntsova had been vocal about ending the war in Ukraine and freeing political prisoners.
A former TV journalist and anti-Ukraine War advocate, Yekaterina Duntsova, has been barred by the government from challenging Putin’s election for a fifth term as president in Russia’s March election. The so-called electoral commission voted unanimously to reject her candidacy, citing 100 ‘mistakes’ on her registration for President form. Ms Duntsova was quick to respond that she would appeal the decision at the Supreme Court.
Two-time Best Actress Oscar-winner Jodie Foster says working with Gen Z can be very frustrating. ‘They’re really annoying. They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10:30 am,’ Jodie told the Daily Mail. ‘Or in emails, I’ll tell them, ‘This is all grammatically incorrect; did you not check your spelling?’ And they’re like, ‘Why would I do that? Isn’t that kind of limiting?’ The actress, who is known for her mentoring new actors, says, ‘They need to learn how to relax, how to not think about it so much, how to come up with something that’s theirs.’
Jodie Foster’s break-out movie was the 1976 film Taxi Driver, where Ms. Foster, then 12 years old, portrayed a child prostitute opposite Robert De Niro. Taxi Driver was very controversial, yet a huge critical and commercial success, and earned her a Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination and two BAFTAs. ‘Taxi Driver was truly one of the most brilliant scripts I’ve ever read,’ says Ms. Foster in an inspiring interview about the making of the movie linked above. Jodie Foster’s history of dedication to her craft, work ethic, and natural grace make her a great role model for Gen Z.
What the Math Says
US adults have hit a new low of only 28% who are satisfied with the way Democracy is working in the country.
We are honored to feature the ten most popular blog posts in 2023 by our holistic health guru and hero, Dr. Frank Lipman. The Good Doctor shows that good health is not that complicated and can be an intellectually inspiring and rewarding journey, in addition to helping you feel revived like never before.
Follow some basic rules for slowing down aging. You’ll help take care of the wrinkles on the outside of you at the same time you’re addressing the wrinkles on the inside – dysfunctions in the way your metabolism, cardiovascular system, immune system, and brain work—the big things that can reduce both the quality and the number of your years on the planet.
Busted lives and wrecked livers come with blatant abusive drinking, but for a much larger group of us, it’s a subtle erosion of the quality of life – trouble sleeping, feeling dragged out, and mentally slower. Even the government recommends–no more than two daily drinks—chip away at our physical and mental health. It’s time we call alcohol what it is: a toxin.
Foods that inflame the body drive up the risk of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. But what we often forget is pro-inflammatory foods are awful for brain health in the near term – think brain fog, anxiety, depression – and long-term, increased risk of developing – Alzheimer’s, dementia, neurological disease., etc. Simply put, you need to kick them now to save your brain.
Especially when it comes to things like breakfast items, beverages, and snacks, my wellness team and I often find ourselves having to debunk people’s misconceptions about ‘health-washed’ foods. So, which items consistently wind up on our must-debunk list?
‘Your mission: to hang onto as much muscle as you can so you can live and move well for as long as possible.’
Having a solid cardio routine is great for your cardiovascular system, but we can’t ignore the importance of strength training, particularly as we push into middle age and beyond. The good news is there are many ways other than going into a sweaty gym to challenge your muscles and maintain your physical strength by finding a routine that suits you best.
To keep your brain moving in a positive direction for as long as possible, high-quality sleep, whole foods, no sugar, and movement are all key. But another to add to the list would be ‘nootropics.’ The phrase comes from ancient Greek, translated as ‘mind turning,’ and are substances that, when ingested, may enhance mental performance.
No matter how significant the fog is or isn’t, it’s still unnerving when it’s your brain that’s not functioning as seamlessly as you’ve come to expect. So, the question is, what’s triggering your brain fog? And what can you do to lift it and think clearly again?
It’s never been easier to identify how your diet affects glucose levels (that is, the amount of sugar that circulates in the bloodstream) so you can clean up your sugar act before real metabolic trouble begins – and the time to start is now.
We live in an anxiety-triggering era, with life in an almost constant state of rapid change; it can be a challenge for even the mentally healthiest among us to keep anxiety at bay. The good news is there are a number of toxin-and-drug-free, non-addictive ways to tame the anxiety beast. Here are a few of my favorite healthy approaches to help take it down a few notches.
Melatonin is becoming a hot corner of the anti-aging research world. A lot of folks are taking a second or third look at melatonin, including me. Stay tuned to the melatonin research (I know I will), and we’ll see how this story develops.
Welcome to the kick-off of the 2024 Cryptonite 300 (C300) competition. Eligible companies are generally venture capital-backed enterprises driven by Web3 innovation, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), blockchain and crypto, and the metaverse and virtual reality (VR).
Creating Category Leaders If you are a hustling innovation entrepreneur ready to pitch your story and boost your funding and branding efforts, it might be time for you to do a Cryptonite Founder’s Pitch on a Cryptonite Live! webcast and reach our 500,000+. Our job is to bring your pitch alive and put it in front of the investors and influencers who matte…
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Really enjoyed this weekly roundup! A great mix of insights and trends—always appreciate the clear and engaging breakdown. Looking forward to the next one!
Absolutely love this newsletter! Keep it up Anthony.
Really enjoyed this weekly roundup! A great mix of insights and trends—always appreciate the clear and engaging breakdown. Looking forward to the next one!