Investing

A $250 Million Cannon Is Pointed At Google

Austin Smith

Published: August 14, 2024 12:30 pm

Key Points:

• Perplexity, an AI company, raised $250 million to build a better search engine than Google.
• AI’s potential could challenge Google’s long-standing dominance.
• A non-political, effective alternative may attract users and threaten Google’s market share.
• Also: With AI stocks taking a step back, it’s the perfect time to load up on ‘The Next Nvidia’ before it soars again

Lee and Doug discuss the emergence of a new search engine developed by an AI-based company called Perplexity, which recently raised $250 million at a $3 billion valuation. They suggest that after 25 years of Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) dominance in search, this could be the start of a shift in the market, especially if AI can provide a better query-based search experience. They highlight how AI’s ability to teach itself could make it a strong competitor to Google. The conversation touches on the potential for Perplexity to address concerns around biased search results, which could attract users seeking more neutral and reliable information. This development could pose a significant market share challenge for Google, which has not faced serious competition in over two decades.

Transcript:

So we knew this was going to happen someday, that eventually there would be a better mousetrap than Google for search.

Now, artificial intelligence made me think anyway that it might happen after 25 years of being the dominant search engine with hundreds and hundreds of hours of software experts laboring with these algorithms.

So a company called Perplexity, AI-based company, just raised $250 million at a valuation of $3 billion.

Not, you know, not chump change.

And the proposition is very simple.

We have built a better search engine than Google, particularly if it is query-based.

If your question is, you know, how large, what is a BMW 737 weigh?

I think that there’s a fairly good chance that AI develops and even teaches itself how to search.

That’s the thing that I love about AI.

It’s one of those things where Americans have finally said, well, we know how to do everything.

We’ve taught software how to think for itself and train itself.

Yeah.

That it may end up being good enough.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

That people will start to use it.

And at that point, Google has a market share problem, which it has not had for over two decades.

It has dominated search.

And with over 90%, with Bing having about 6%.

And again, how are they going to do that and fight that when somebody comes with a reasonable alternative that works just as fast and just as good?

And again, I think something that we’ve discussed this in the past, on certain subjects, if you go to Google, if it isn’t politically up their alley, you won’t find anything.

And if you do, it’ll be buried way in the back.

And I think all people that are looking for data, you know, can we just have it on a non-political basis and just have the data out there so I can see what it is?

That could make a big difference.