Perplexity

• Perplexity AI announced a Series D funding round of $500 million at an $8.5 billion post-money valuation on April 19, led by prominent venture capital firms and strategic investors including Nvidia and Saudi PIF. • The funding will support expansion of Perplexity's AI search engine capabilities, development of enterprise API offerings, and geographic expansion into European and Asian markets with localized language models. • The round positions Perplexity as a serious challenger to Google Search and reflects growing investor confidence in AI-powered search alternatives and conversational information retrieval platforms.

• Perplexity announced b.well as the infrastructure partner behind its health data integration, enabling citation-backed AI search capabilities for actual patient records and medical information retrieval. • The partnership aligns with broader industry trends toward integrating large language models with electronic health record systems, following OpenAI's ChatGPT Health launch and other healthcare AI initiatives. • b.well has emerged as a significant health AI infrastructure company, having also launched bailey (a white-label health assistant) and expanded partnerships with Samsung to transform Galaxy phones into portable health records with point-of-care data sharing.

• Perplexity AI introduced Perplexity Health on March 23, 2026, enabling users to connect provider health information via B.Well alongside data from Apple Health, Fitbit, and Withings. • The dashboard tracks personal health metrics and answers questions based on individual user data using AI-powered search capabilities. • This tool addresses growing demand for accessible health data integration amid criticisms of inaccurate crowdsourced medical advice from platforms like Google.

Perplexity revealed plans on March 13, 2026, to evolve AI beyond question-answering by developing secure agents that run on personal hardware and act autonomously for users. The strategy emphasizes on-device processing to enhance privacy and speed. This positions Perplexity in the growing $20 billion edge AI market, challenging cloud-dominant rivals. Future updates are slated for Q2 2026 rollout.