Carbon Connects: Perplexity Acquires Startup to Enhance Enterprise Search Capabilities

Perplexity acquires Carbon to connect AI search to your work files

Perplexity has acquired a Seattle-based startup called Carbon, which specializes in connecting AI systems to external data sources. This acquisition is expected to enable Perplexity’s answer engine to access information from various sources such as internal databases, cloud storage, and document repositories.

Carbon is known for its retrieval augmented generation (RAG) technology, which allows large language models to retrieve information from external databases before generating an answer. With this technology, Perplexity aims to make it easier for employees in enterprises to search through vast amounts of unstructured data that their companies have accumulated over the years.

Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind Srinivasan, stated that the acquisition will allow them to connect AI search to work files such as those found on Notion, Google Docs, Slack, and other enterprise applications. This integration is expected to be available sometime in early 2025.

The move by Perplexity into the enterprise AI search space comes at a time when it’s becoming increasingly competitive. OpenAI reportedly told investors that they cannot invest in Glean, another company leading this charge. Glean has inspired several other major players such as OpenAI, Google, and multiple other companies to develop their own enterprise search products.

This acquisition is Perplexity’s second, following its 2023 purchase of Spellwise, whose CEO was brought on board to develop Perplexity’s mobile app.

The move highlights the growing importance of AI in various industries and the need for seamless integration with existing work files and databases.

Source: techcrunch.com