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Perplexity AI logo is seen in this illustration taken January 4, 2024. 

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Perplexity AI, the artificial intelligence startup that’s been embroiled in controversy due to accusations of plagiarizing content from media outlets, plans to start running ads on its search app in the fourth quarter, CNBC has learned.

The company, which specializes in AI-assisted search, is circulating a pitch deck, promoting the app’s reach and increasing usage. The company says its app has been downloaded more than 2 million times and has 230 million monthly users, while U.S. queries have increased eightfold in the past year, according to the presentation, which was viewed by CNBC.

Perplexity raised new funding in April that valued the company at more than $1 billion, doubling its valuation from three months earlier. But the app’s increasing popularity has highlighted concerns surrounding the ways the company surfaces content from other sources.

Forbes reported in June that it found a plagiarized version of one of its stories on Perplexity with no reference to the media outlet other than a small “F” logo at the bottom of the page. Weeks later, Wired said it also found evidence of Perplexity plagiarizing Wired stories, and reported that an IP address “almost certainly linked to Perplexity and not listed in its public IP range” visited its parent company’s websites more than 800 times in a three-month span.

The company told CNBC that, following the allegations, it made changes to how Perplexity’s Pages feature cites sources and also made updates so that its responses are better at citing outlets directly within the generated copy.

Last month, Perplexity debuted a revenue sharing model, giving publishers an opportunity to make money through the company’s search engine. Any time a user asks a question and Perplexity generates ad revenue from citing an article in its answer, Perplexity will share a percentage of that revenue with the publisher.

Media outlets and content platforms including Fortune, Time, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, Der Spiegel and WordPress were among the first to join the company’s “Publishers Program.” Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer, told CNBC in a July interview that if three articles from one publisher were used in one answer, the partner would receive “triple the revenue share.” He said the company had been working on the feature since January and that its goal is to have 30 publishers enrolled by the end of the year.

With advertising, Perplexity will follow a model called CPM, or cost per thousand impressions, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details aren’t public. CPM prices will be more than $50, the source said. Search marketing firm Semrush wrote in a blog post last year that display ads on desktop typically have CPMs of around $2.50, while mobile videos have rates of about $11.10.

Perplexity said in its pitch deck that its key advertising categories initially would include topics like technology, health and pharmaceuticals, arts and entertainment, finance, and food and beverage. Advertisers will be able to sponsor “related questions” below answers and buy display ads to the right or a Perplexity-generated answer.

According to the presentation, more than eight in 10 Perplexity users have an undergraduate degree, while three in 10 are in a “senior leadership position,” and 65% are in “high-income white-collar professions,” such as medicine, law and software engineering.

AI-assisted search has been viewed by investors as one of Google’s key risks, as it potentially changes the way consumers access information online. OpenAI, which started the generative AI craze in late 2022 with ChatGPT, introduced a search engine last month called SearchGPT. In May, Google launched “AI Overviews” in search, allowing users to see a quick summary of answers at the top of results.

WATCH: AI startup Perplexity launches publisher program

AI start-up Perplexity launches publisher program

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Coinbase steps into consumer market with stablecoin-powered ‘everything app’ that goes beyond trading

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Coinbase steps into consumer market with stablecoin-powered 'everything app' that goes beyond trading

Dominika Zarzycka | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Coinbase unveiled Wednesday an “everything app” designed to bring more people into the crypto economy.

The “Base App,” which replaces Coinbase Wallet, will combine wallet, trading and payment functions as well as social media, messaging and support for mini apps – all running on the company’s homegrown public blockchain network Base, which is built on Ethereum.

So-called super apps like WeChat and Alipay – which bundle several different services and functionalities into a single mobile app – have long been viewed as the holy grail of fintech by the industry. They’re central to everyday life in China but haven’t been successfully replicated in the West. Meta Platforms and X have made attempts to realize that vision, integrating payments, messaging and social content, among other things.

For Coinbase, the intent is to expand its reach to a new subset of consumers who aren’t necessarily interested in buying or trading crypto, the company’s core business. Over-reliance on that revenue stream has been a sticking point for the company, and some analysts view the Base blockchain as a way for it to drive utility in crypto beyond speculative trading.

As part of the Base App launch, Coinbase also rolled out two key functions meant to help power it: an identity verification system called Base Account and an express checkout system for payments with the Circle-issued USDC stablecoin, called Base Pay.

Base Pay is a one-click checkout feature for USDC payments across the web, developed with Shopify. At the end of the year, Coinbase plans to bring Base Pay to brick-and-mortar stores with tap-to-pay support. Alex Danco, product manager at Shopify, said at Coinbase’s unveiling event that the function has been turned on for tens of thousands of its merchants this week, and will roll out to every merchant by the end of the year. Shopify will also offer 1% cash back in the U.S. for users who pay with USDC on Base later this year, he said.

Until now, enthusiasm around the Base network has been confined to builders and developers keen to use the technology. In perhaps the highest profile example, JPMorgan said last month that it’s launching a so-called deposit token on the Base blockchain.

Base is often touted for its ability to settle a payment in less than a second for less than a cent, which its fans expect will help the network grow in a way other crypto-based payments efforts haven’t.

Now, Coinbase hopes to tap into an opportunity to settle payments on the Base network that go beyond trading and payments. With the introduction of the everything app, the company is emphasizing the opportunity for a new economic model for content creators in particular – one that might give them more direct and diverse monetization options for their content as well as more control over their identity and data.

Coinbase will fund creator rewards and waive USDC transaction fees within chats in the app as part of the effort to bring more users on chain. It is not expected to generate significant revenue right away.

The new consumer app comes as the crypto industry and Coinbase, in particular, embrace a boom in product launches and rollouts thanks to the pro-crypto policies of the Trump administration and more clearly defined crypto regulations expected from Congress — perhaps as soon as this week. Last month Coinbase launched its first credit card with American Express and Shopify rolled out USDC-powered payments through Coinbase and Stripe.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has said both have a “stretch goal” to make USDC the number 1 stablecoin in the world, a position currently held by Tether’s USDT, and that he aims to make Coinbase “the number one financial services app in the world” in the next five to 10 years.

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OpenAI says it will use Google’s cloud for ChatGPT

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OpenAI says it will use Google's cloud for ChatGPT

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks to members of the media as he arrives at a lodge for the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference on July 8, 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images News | Getty Images

OpenAI said Wednesday that it expects to use Google’s cloud infrastructure for its popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence assistant.

The reach for additional capacity aligns with OpenAI’s desire for more computing power to meet heavy demand after initially relying exclusively on Microsoft for cloud capacity. The two companies’ relations have evolved since then, with Microsoft naming OpenAI as a competitor last year.

Both companies sell AI tools for developers and offer subscriptions to companies.

OpenAI has added Google to a list of suppliers, specifying that ChatGPT and its application programming interface will use the Google Cloud Platform, as well as Microsoft, CoreWeave and Oracle.

The announcement amounts to a win for Google, whose cloud unit is younger and smaller than Amazon‘s and Microsoft‘s. Google also has cloud business with Anthropic, which was established by former OpenAI executives.

The Google infrastructure will run in the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

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Last year, Oracle announced that it was partnering with Microsoft and OpenAl “to extend the Microsoft Azure Al platform to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure” to give OpenAI additional computing power. In March, OpenAI committed to a cloud agreement with CoreWeave in a five-year deal worth nearly $12 billion.

Microsoft said in January that it had agreed to move to a model of providing the right of first refusal anytime OpenAI needs more computing resources, rather than being its exclusive vendor across the board. Microsoft continues to hold the exclusive on OpenAI’s programming interfaces.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO, said in April that the startup, which draws on Nvidia graphics processing units to power its large language models, was facing capacity constraints.

“if anyone has GPU capacity in 100k chunks we can get asap please call!” he wrote in an X post at the time.

Reuters reported in June that OpenAI was planning to bring on cloud capacity from Google.

WATCH: ChatGPT’s growth has been unassailed and looks set to continue: Altimeter’s Apoorv Agrawal

ChatGPT's growth has been unassailed and looks set to continue: Altimeter's Apoorv Agrawal

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Tesla’s change in bylaws to limit shareholder lawsuits slammed by New York state officials

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Tesla's change in bylaws to limit shareholder lawsuits slammed by New York state officials

Elon Musk interviews on CNBC from the Tesla Headquarters in Texas.

CNBC

In May, Tesla changed its corporate bylaws in a way that would require investors to own 3% of the stock, today worth about $30 billion, in order to file a derivative lawsuit against the company for breach of fiduciary duties. Authorities in New York State are now asking Tesla to delete the bylaw entirely.

Overseers of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which owns about 0.1% of Tesla’s shares, submitted a formal proxy proposal and letter to the company on July 11, and shared it with CNBC on Wednesday. They say that Elon Musk’s automaker engaged in a “bait-and-switch” to convince shareholders to approve an incorporation move from Delaware to Texas in June 2024.

Musk made the move after a judge in Delaware voided the $56 billion pay package that the CEO, also the world’s richest person, was granted by Tesla in 2018, the largest compensation plan in public company history. In getting shareholders to approve the change in its state of incorporation, Tesla said that stakeholders’ rights “are substantially equivalent” under the laws of Delaware and Texas.

On May 14, almost a year after Tesla’s move, Texas changed its law to allow corporations in the state to require 3% ownership before being able to carry forth a shareholder derivative suit.

“The very next day, Tesla’s board amended the Company’s bylaws to the maximum allowable 3% ownership threshold, effectively insulating the Company’s directors and officers from accountability to shareholders,” the New York letter says. The letter was signed by Gianna McCarthy, a director of corporate governance with the retirement fund, on behalf of the fund and New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Only three institutions currently own at least 3% of Tesla’s outstanding shares.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The New York fund overseers wrote that derivative actions are “the last resort for shareholders to enforce their rights” when company directors or officers violate their fiduciary obligations, and called Tesla’s decision on the matter “egregious.”

In an email to CNBC, DiNapoli said Tesla “deceived shareholders” in assuring them that their rights would remain the same in Texas.

“These actions violate basic tenets of good corporate governance and must be reversed,” he wrote.

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What to know about the renewed executive churn under Elon Musk

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