Perplexity acquires Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals

Read.cvA social media platform for professionals that competes with LinkedIn has been acquired by an artificial intelligence-powered search engine. Confusion.

As part of the deal, Read.cv will begin ceasing operations on Friday. Users will be able to export their data, including profiles, posts and messages, until May 16.

“We have long been fascinated by Confusion and believe that great things happen when the world’s knowledge is more open and accessible,” reads the post on Read.cv. blog. “In that spirit, we’re excited to join the design and engineering team at Perplexity to continue our mission of exploration and discovery.”

I am happy to share it today @read_cv joins the team @perplexity_ai on a mission to make the world’s knowledge more accessible to all. This is incredibly bittersweet for us because the beginning of this new chapter will mark the end of our time. @read_cv.

It has… pic.twitter.com/6CUinOEGsi

— Andy Chung (@_andychung) January 17, 2025

A Perplexity spokesperson confirmed the purchase to TechCrunch via email, but did not provide further details.

“We are delighted to have the Read.cv team join Perplexity” Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, wrote in X. “The team is incredibly skilled at designing and building consumer and social experiences, and we look forward to working with them in many exciting new directions!”

Founded in 2021 by Andy Chung, a product designer at Quip, formerly owned by Facebook, Mozilla and Salesforce, Read.cv offered a set of tools that allowed users to share their resumes and chat with other professionals in their industry. Read.cv also offers capabilities aimed at organizations, such as posting team profiles and job listings and conducting candidate searches.

Read.cv recently launched Sites, a feature that allows users to publish their personal website using their Read.cv profile. Users could even get a “.cv” domain from Read.cv and add it to their profile if they wanted.

Read.cv says it plans to transfer “.cv” domains to its partners at Hello.cv as of January 31, where users can continue to manage them.

Perplexity plans for Read.cv, which has about three employees and is based in West Berkeley supported by Funding from F7 Ventures and Fanjul Capital is unclear. But Perplexity invested in increasingly enterprise-oriented functionality last summer activation user management, single sign-on, etc. enterprise plan with

The moves may be in part at the behest of the VCs backing Perplexity, who are no doubt eager to bounce back sooner or later. There is confusion reported It has raised more than $500 million in capital from investors including Institutional Venture Partners and is valued at $9 billion.

Read.cv is the third acquisition after the acquisition of Perplexity CarbonIt specializes in connecting AI systems to external data sources. Confusion in 2023 Spellwise got, The CEO was brought in to develop Perplexity’s mobile app.