A tale of two startups: Anthropic and Perplexity

The news: Anthropic and Perplexity emerged as AI darlings in 2024, but they’re taking different paths toward model improvement and user acquisition.

• Safety-focused Anthropic is centered on its generative AI (genAI) chatbot, Claude, and enterprise applications, and is attracting large investors.
• Move-fast-and-break-things Perplexity is focused on AI search engines, including in-search shopping options and sponsored ads, but is battling accusations of content theft and data scraping.

Approach to training: Both companies face challenges sourcing data for model training, especially as that pool of information dwindles.

• Anthropic uses publicly available online information, user contributions, and licensed content. Some publishers claim Anthropic’s web crawler is the most aggressive of all, while others report it stops once blocked.
• Perplexity’s search engine “scours the internet” for articles and journals, but that approach has alienated it from outlets like The New York Times and Forbes and been referred to as “illegal copying” by others.

Of the top 250 websites, about 14.4% currently block Perplexity’s AI web crawler and about 18% block Anthropic’s, per OriginalityAI.

What’s the financial plan? Growth in genAI requires either strong partnerships or deep pockets.

• Anthropic has secured up to $2 billion from Alphabet and about $8 billion from Amazon. Both deals, which were questioned then approved by regulators, are helping the Big Tech players bolster internal AI services and initiatives.
• Perplexity relies on ad revenue and in-app shopping features. Although it has penned some major publishing deals and attracted Nvidia to a funding round in early 2024, it hasn’t gathered as many major tech investors as Anthropic has.

Anthropic’s valuation is between $30 billion and $40 billion, per The Information, compared with Perplexity’s $9 billion. Those both pale in comparison with OpenAI, which is valued at around $157 billion.

What to expect in 2025: Anthropic’s safety focus is boosting investor confidence but, if Big Tech partners grow too reliant on its tech, Anthropic’s flexibility could become limited.

Perplexity’s legal challenges are ongoing and it faces a make-or-break moment for ad revenue. Failure to profit could lead to more stake sales or an acquisition.

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