Perplexity AI triples its valuation in about 6 months with latest $500 million funding round

• Perplexity AI reportedly secured $500 million in its latest funding round this month.
• That puts the startup's valuation at $9 billion, tripling its worth within six months.
• A handful of AI startups have seen its valuation skyrocket amid rapid funding rounds this year.

Perplexity AI closed a $500 million funding round earlier this month, pushing its valuation to $9 billion, a source familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

That means the AI search engine startup has managed to triple its valuation within six months after an investment from SoftBank put the company at a $3 billion valuation in June.

The latest funding round was led by Institutional Venture Partners, the source told Bloomberg. CNBC also reported in November that Perplexity was in the final stages of securing the investment from IVP.

A spokesperson for Perplexity declined to comment. A spokesperson for Institutional Venture Partners did not return a request for comment.

Perplexity is among a handful of buzzy AI startups that have seen their valuation balloon this year amid a feeding frenzy from VCs and investors looking for companies focused on artificial intelligence.

Anthropic, which built the Claude AI model, announced an additional $4 billion investment from Amazon in November.

That same month, Elon Musk told investors that his AI venture, xAI, raised $5 billion, valuing the startup at $50 billion.

In October, OpenAI announced that it had raised $6.6 billion at a historic $157 billion valuation.

Those large investments also come despite some of the controversies AI startups face around data and copyrighted work.

In October, News Corp, the owner of The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, accusing the startup of copyright infringement.

OpenAI is facing a similar legal battle that was filed by The New York Times last year. The publication said OpenAI used "millions" of articles to train the startup's ChatGPT model.

Both startups have denied the allegations.