Following Samsung and SK, Mirae Asset will also become a shareholder of Perplexity, a U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) startup.
According to the investment banking (IB) industry on the 24th, Mirae Asset Financial Group recently took part in Perplexity's new funding round, investing about $110 million (about 150 billion won).
The U.S. subsidiary of Mirae Asset Global Investments led the investment, and Mirae Asset Capital and others were said to have provided additional funding. Perplexity's corporate value was set at $20 billion (about 28 trillion won).
Perplexity is an AI-based search engine startup founded in 2022 by former OpenAI staff, the developer of ChatGPT. Its own AI-based web browser "Comet" is the flagship product.
Perplexity is considered the strongest AI challenger to Google's dominance in search and has received investment from Nvidia and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
In Korea, Samsung Next, the U.S. investment subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, and SK Telecom were found to have each made investments in the first half of last year with the goal of collaboration in AI.
Mirae Asset Financial Group executed this investment with the goal of securing AI capabilities. Mirae Asset Financial Group had previously invested in AI corporations such as Moloco, xAI, and Cohere.