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Welcome to the AI chat podcast. I'm your

0:02

host, Jayden Schaefer. Today on the podcast, we're

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talking about the fact that perplexity has allegedly

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just raised a massive new $500 million round.

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If you're watching this over on YouTube or

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Spotify, you can see the videos and the

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visuals. I'll be sharing my screen and breaking

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down exactly what's going on. If you're on

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Apple, check out the link in the description

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to the YouTube channel. And you can also

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see that. All right. What is really impressive

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is not just the fact that perplexity in

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my opinion has raised this $500 million round

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and warranted. I'll say that they've refused to

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kind of comment on the story, but this

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is essentially the rumors coming out this closed in

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December. But what's interesting to

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me is that they are also actively acquiring

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companies. They're not slowing down. We'll, we'll get

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into all of that in the podcast today.

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I think this is an absolutely fascinating story.

0:44

Before we get into it, I wanted to

0:46

mention, if you've ever wanted to start an

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join our incredible classroom, get a lot

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of amazing stuff every single week. Okay. Let's

1:47

get into the podcast. So. They've

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raised this $500 million round. What

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is their exact valuation? This

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values the startup at $9

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billion. This is absolutely incredible to

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watch how fast they have been, um,

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growing and actually moving. So all

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of this apparently was reported by.

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Bloomberg who has a bit of

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an inside scoop on this allegedly.

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So this will be interesting to

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see how this continues to roll

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out in the future. So they

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were apparently citing some familiar sources,

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which said that the land, the

2:20

round was actually led by institutional

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venture partners. Um, it closed earlier

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in December and there's still

2:26

being pretty tight lipped about it. No one

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wants to talk about it, but this huge.

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new tranche that they've just pulled in is

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coming as this whole area is really heating

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up, right? So perplexity is known for being

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kind of this competitor to Google and the

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AI space with a lot of their AI

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tools, but they're not the only ones doing

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this. Now Google is trying to compete more

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heavily with them. Open AI recently launched their

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chat GPT search, which is, you know, trying

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to be a competitor to them. They got

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quite serious about it back in October of

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October 31st on this. Now I would say.

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They have a lot of really cool things

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over on chat, GPT that they've started to add.

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For example, restaurants. Um, if you do like

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a search for the best restaurant near me, chat,

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GPT is now able to give you like

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much more, what you call rich results. So you

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can imagine, um, you know,

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there's like images. So if

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you search for something like, you

3:15

know, uh, best food place

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in Toronto, for example, um,

3:19

hopefully that works because Canada has

3:21

some interesting laws, but in any

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case, typically, um, yeah. Okay.

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Toronto is a bad example. By

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the way, I'm live asking chat GPT

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this, uh, well, I did this,

3:31

um, and they did not want to

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give me, uh, they didn't want

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to give me anything. Actually, you know

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what? Here's a real problem on chat GPT

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right now. And it says that search

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is unavailable. Anyways, maybe that's because I got

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started with 01. So we got to

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go to an older model, um, to be

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able to use this and, um, Let's

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see. In any case, all right. So if

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you ask for best food places near

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me, chatGPT is now adding some images. Um,

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all right. I tried it again and

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I, you really have to know exactly what to, how

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to work chatGPT. And this is actually a perfect

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example of why perplexity is doing good. So this is

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the whole thing that I've just been talking about. I,

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I initially went to chatGPT and I said

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best food places in Toronto. It just gave

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me kind of like a list of some

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places. Um, but no pictures. It's just a

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basic chatGP response with texts that you would.

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typically expect. And that is because chat should

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be by default had me selected on their

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01 model. It's the most advanced model, but

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the problem is their most advanced model doesn't

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have the search built in. So I had

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to go manually switch to go to GP

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chat, should be T4O go and select to

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have search enabled. And once I did that

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and made a search, it pulled up this

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really cool looking map. which had, you know, cited

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sources, which you could click to get

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directions. You could go to their website. You

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could call them. Um, you could kind

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of scroll through a bunch of different things.

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It feels very Google, very search

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engine esque. There's a lot of like

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really cool. Um, you

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know, there's a lot of really cool things. If

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you click on getting directions, it's going to

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open you straight up to, to go and actually

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get directions. Um, on maps. So that sounds

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awesome. But the problem is I had to go

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jump through a bunch of hoops. And when

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I did my first search, it didn't just automatically,

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uh, give me what I wanted. So I

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think for this reason, um, perplexity

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is still going to be beating chat, GPD.

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And I don't think it's going to be

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this huge competition because you can imagine like people

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aren't going to want to click through all

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of those hoops. Uh, perplexity really is streamlined. And

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so I think this is going to be,

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um, opening,

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I really would have to, to fix some of

5:30

that to, uh, to, to solve the

5:32

problem. So I don't think that's going to be an issue.

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Anyways, there's a, there's a competition.

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Chatchapiti is doing this. Google is doing this,

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but Google might actually do something new,

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which is a little bit maybe scared for

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perplexity, but we'll see. I think perplexity

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so far has been pretty far out and

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ahead. Um, the information this,

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this week reported that Google is planning

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to take a little bit more of

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a approach where they're going to be creating

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actual. chatbot and AI mode

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that's built straight into search.

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That's super, um, super integrated

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that hopefully is going to compete with

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perplexity because up until this point, we've

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seen, you know, Google adds some AI

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summaries at the top and chat GPT

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sort of added GPT search, but nothing

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really competing with perplexity as I've just.

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demonstrated live on here. Um, and so I

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think this is a big issue for

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a lot of these players. Perplexity really is

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just scooping up a ton of market.

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And I think that, you know, some of

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the big players are getting quite concerned

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about this. So with all of this being

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said, perplexity is not just resting. They're

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continuing to go. And that is because

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they've actually went and acquired a

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new company called. carbon. This is really

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interesting. This is kind of

6:39

their, one of their first acquisitions, but carbon

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is essentially helping you to connect AI search to

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your work files. So you can imagine right

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at your office, right on your computer, you have

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all these files. You want to use AI

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to search through them all. And carbon is helping

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you do that. Perplexity is now helping you

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do that. So you can imagine with perplexity, you

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can search, get an incredible search engine, but

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at the same time you're searching through all of

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your local fire files. This makes it so

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much more competitive, so much more useful.

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And when a company like Google comes out,

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Google's trying to do this in their

7:08

own way where they're letting you search through,

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um, you know, your Gmail and your,

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uh, docs, maybe with some of their Gemini

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assistance, but they're not going to have

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the local files on your computer. Maybe PDFs

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you. created in Canva or other places

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and downloaded, um, or Microsoft files. And so

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perplexity, getting all the access to this,

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I think is going to be a massive

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game changer. We know that most companies

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do not use Google, you know, free suite.

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Usually it's, uh, different tools out

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of Microsoft like PowerPoint and, um,

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you know, Microsoft word and all of that kind of

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stuff. And so I think this is going to

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be absolutely massive. I'm super excited to see where this

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goes and I'll keep you up to date on

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all of it.