Japanese tech investor SoftBank Group's Vision Fund 2 plans to invest between$10 million and$20 million in US search startup Perplexity AI, valuing the company at$3 billion. The investment is part of a larger$250 million funding round, which remains partially disclosed as the deal details are still being negotiated, and SoftBank and Perplexity have not commented.

Perplexity AI provides search tools that deliver instant answers with sources and citations, leveraging various large language models from OpenAI to Meta's Llama. The San Francisco-based company raised$73.6 million in January from investors, including Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, at a valuation of$520 million.

The startup handled over 500 million queries in 2023 with minimal marketing expenditure.