Nvidia in Talks to Invest Billions in Perplexity

Nvidia, which has poured tens of billions of dollars into AI hardware companies such as chip manufacturers and data centers, is turning its attention to AI software. The chipmaker has recently been challenging a U.S. market dominated by closed models with Nemotron, its own open-source model, and the moves are seen as a decision to accelerate that push.

The Information, a U.S. technology news outlet, reported on the 23rd, citing sources, that Nvidia is in talks to join a new equity investment round in AI startup Perplexity. The round values Perplexity at more than $30 billion (about 41 trillion won), with the fundraising expected to reach several billion dollars.

Nvidia and Perplexity already have close business ties. In March, Perplexity joined the “Nemotron alliance” that supports the development of Nvidia’s open-source models. Nvidia has already invested in Perplexity several times, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said in an interview that Perplexity is his favorite chatbot.

Nvidia had previously considered an investment that would license some of Perplexity’s technology and absorb its employees, according to reports. Last year, Nvidia signed similar licensing and hiring deals with Groq, an AI inference chip design firm, and Enfabrica, a networking hardware design firm. It is not clear why those discussions shifted to an equity investment, The Information said. If the deal is completed, Perplexity is expected to gain a stable…