Perplexity Acquires Carbon to Bring AI Search to Enterprise Work Files
Perplexity buys Seattle startup Carbon to integrate AI search with workplace tools like Slack and Google Docs. The move positions Perplexity to compete in the rapidly growing enterprise AI search market.
Perplexity acquires Seattle-based startup Carbon to connect its AI search engine directly to user work files. Carbon specializes in retrieval augmented generation (RAG), a technology that allows large language models to pull information from external databases before generating answers. This acquisition brings Carbon's staff and technology under Perplexity's umbrella to enhance its answer engine.
The integration allows Perplexity to search through files and messages in workplace applications like Notion, Google Docs, and Slack starting in early 2025. By tapping into these diverse sources of internal data, cloud storage, and document repositories, Perplexity provides more informed and contextually accurate responses for its users. This capability lays the groundwork for a dedicated enterprise search product.
This move enters Perplexity into a highly competitive enterprise AI search market currently led by Glean. Major AI players like OpenAI and Google are also developing similar enterprise search tools to help employees sift through massive amounts of unstructured company data. This marks Perplexity's second acquisition, following its 2023 purchase of Spellwise to build out its mobile app.