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On Tuesday, Perplexity launched an API service called Sonar that lets businesses and developers build the startup’s generative AI search tools into their apps.
“While most generative AI features today only have answers based on training data, this limits their capabilities,” Perplexity wrote. blog post. “To optimize for fact and authority, APIs require real-time Internet connectivity with answers provided by trusted sources.”
To get started, Perplexity offers two tiers that developers can choose from: a basic version, Sonar, which is cheaper and faster, and a more expensive version, Sonar Pro, which is better for challenging questions. Confusion states that the Sonar API also allows businesses and developers to customize the sources that the AI search engine pulls.
With the launch of the API, Perplexity is making its AI search engine available in more places than just its app and website. Perplexity says Zoom, among other companies, is already using Sonar to power its AI assistant for its video conferencing platform. Sonar allows Zoom’s AI chatbot to provide real-time responses informed by web searches with quotes, without requiring users to leave the video chat window.
Sonar could also give Perplexity another source of revenue, which could be especially important to the startup’s investors. Perplexity only offers a subscription service for unlimited access to its AI search engine and some additional features. However, the tech industry has lowered prices for accessing AI tools through API tools in the past year, and Perplexity claims to offer the cheapest AI search API on the market through Sonar.
The base version of Sonar offers a cheaper and faster version of the company’s artificial intelligence search tools. The basic version of Sonar has a fixed price and uses a lightweight model. It costs $5 per 1,000 searches, plus $1 for every 750,000 words you type into the AI model (about 1 million input tokens) and another $1 for every 750,000 words the model spits out (about 1 million output tokens).
The more expensive Sonar Pro provides more detailed answers and is capable of solving more complex questions. This version will perform multiple lookups on top of the user query, meaning the price may be more unpredictable. Confusion also says that this version offers twice as many quotes as the basic version of Sonar. Sonar Pro costs $5 for every 1,000 searches, plus $3 for every 750,000 words you type into the AI model (roughly 1 million input tokens) and $15 for every 750,000 words the model spits out (roughly 1 million output tokens).
Perplexity claims that Sonar Pro outperformed leading models from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic in SimpleQA, a benchmark that measures the actual accuracy of AI chatbot responses.
As we recently reported, Perplexity’s annual recurring revenue It is between 5-10 million dollars. That seems pretty healthy for a startup of Perplexity’s size and age, but the startup is certainly looking for new ways to grow its revenue. The startup raised an additional $73.6 million in a funding round earlier this month, valuing the company at about $520 million.
