Carbon’s integration of Perplexity will enable businesses to connect their data with AI search

2024 has been a year of writing Mental confusion. The AI ​​search startup, founded by former DeepMind and OpenAI researcher Aravind Srinivas, has raised millions of dollars – its latest investment. he says valuing the company at $9 billion – and launching several notable products, including Pages, Opportunitiesand new shopping experiences.

This has solidified Perplexity’s reputation as an “AI-first” search engine, standing in for traditional giants like Google and Bing, which are adding AI capabilities to their existing engines.

However, the journey is not over.

In the face of increasing competition, Perplexity is expanding its scope with new additions to its portfolio: Air. The company said found this startup, at an undisclosed cost, to address the “gap” businesses face with AI search and improve the process of identifying information in their processes.

Carbon has developed a comprehensive recovery plan that supports the process of connecting external data sources to LLMs. Users can use Carbon universal API or SDKs sync their data sources and find out what you can use with LLMs. It has more than 20 native data connection integrations and supports more than 20 file formats, including text, audio and video files.

The growth of AI search

From individuals to business users, almost everyone today uses AI search as part of their workflow. The concept of technology is simple – you don’t have to go through links and content to find information and information. Instead, the information will come to you as a direct response to your question.

Disruption has grown significantly in this way, using a variety of major languages ​​to access information from the Internet and to simplify the user experience. It also allows teams to retrieve information from their personal or business files such as PDFs and Word documents.

But, this is something. This website contains public information, and uploading internal files – PDFs, discussions, images – individually is not possible for business users with proprietary information. This affects the quality of the answers, keeping them short and without important answers related to the organization.

Highlighting the “data gap” Sanjeev Mohan, former Gartner Research VP for data and analytics, told VentureBeat that one of the biggest trends in AI in 2025 will be ETL. unprocessed data. It will allow teams to extract and process data from scattered internal sources, ultimately empowering their LLMs to create relevant and accurate solutions.

Now, this is what Perplexity plans to do and find a way to get all of Carbon. Disruption will integrate Carbon’s discovery engine and connectors into its technology add-ons, giving platform users a straightforward way to connect their various data sources, from Google Docs and Notion to Hubspot and Slack.

This, the company says, will enhance the knowledge base of the AI ​​search engine, making its solutions more intuitive, relevant and user-friendly.

What can users expect from Carbon-powered Perplexity?

Although Perplexity has just acquired Carbon and the integration is not yet done, it’s easy to imagine how the additional connections will change the way business teams use the AI ​​search engine.

For example, if someone has to move a launch date and needs to know the deadline and guidelines set by their team, Perplexity can scan everything in Google Docs, Notion, and Slack – and create the necessary information. correlations – finding information that answers a question.

Instead, there will be no need to worry about synchronizing content from the Internet, standalone apps, and messaging. The platform does everything by itself to provide the solution.

“The obvious advantage of this setup is that our technology can find the answer without having to identify the document/database where the information is stored,” Sara Platnick, who leads communications at Perplexity, told VentureBeat.

Another example, he said, would be to obtain customer information. Disruption will be able to gain insights and focus on conversations from connected CRMs in the near future.

Especially, using Carbon’s restore-add generation (RAG) workflow, Perplexity makes enterprise search more accessible, saving companies the hassle of building their RAG pipelines from scratch.

“By finding and defining the content of Perplexity and Carbon, companies can deal with several types of use of AI models. We find that leading managers focus on customer service, document processing, image processing and production engines, Kevin Petrie, “Deputy of research at BARC US, told VentureBeat.

Execution will be necessary

Carbon acquisition is just the beginning. The real key will be execution, or how the underlying technology is integrated seamlessly and securely. After all, we are talking about the owners from some of the most important things that businesses keep.

“Companies are careful not to reveal their intelligence to the public. So Perplexity and Carbon will need to provide controls that ensure companies can keep their data safe within firewalls. They have no interest in sharing secrets or teaching people to adopt their own wisdom,” Petrie said.

On the side of Perplexity, Platnick said that “all the internal and confidential information of the engine is kept private, as is everything transmitted and stored in the Carbon connections.” He added that the company has additional security measures in place to ensure that confidential documents remain private and are not available to unauthorized users.

As of now, there is no specific time to combine Carbon and Perplexity. However, the startup will retire its managed API on March 31, 2025. Existing customers using the API have already been notified to opt out, with the Carbon team helping them with the transition.