Perplexity AI, an AI search startup, has seen a remarkable growth in its monthly income and usage, increasing by about seven times since the beginning of this year. With a reported 2.5 billion questions answered in just one month, the company's annual answer count now stands at roughly 5 billion. Founded by Aravind Srinivas in August 2022, Perplexity is positioning itself as a rival to Google Search in the AI era. Notably, Perplexity's rapid ascent mirrors that of OpenAI's ChatGPT, launched in November 2022. The company, headquartered in San Francisco, has attracted investments from high-profile figures like NVIDIA, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and notable AI researchers such as Andrej Karpathy and Yann LeCun. Its innovative model provides direct answers to queries with complete citations, setting it apart from traditional search engines like Google and Baidu, which merely list website links for users to explore. With the recent $250 million funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund II, Perplexity's valuation has surged from $1 billion to $3 billion. This influx of capital enables the company to expand its business model from subscriptions to advertising, directly challenging Google's dominance in the $300 billion search ad market. Perplexity boasts a unique advantage in its focus on delivering accurate answers quickly, distinguishing it from larger competitors. The company plans to introduce ads on its platform, offering a share of revenue to news publishers whose content is cited, thus fostering a sustainable relationship with the media industry. Unlike OpenAI, Perplexity doesn't develop its own AI models but instead uses a combination of licenses from other companies. This approach allows the startup to remain agile and competitive in the rapidly evolving AI search landscape.