Perplexity, Snap ink $400 million partnership

Welcome back. Elon Musk has taken another step towards trillionaire status. On Thursday, Tesla shareholders approved the CEO’s historic pay package worth almost $1 trillion, with 75% of voting shares supporting the decision. The pay package consists of 12 tranches of shares granted to Musk in exchange for hitting certain milestones over the next decade, with the first tranche being paid out if Tesla hits a $2 trillion market cap. In order for Musk to get the full amount, Tesla will need to hit a market cap of $8.5 trillion. 

IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER

1. Perplexity, Snap ink $400 million partnership

2. OpenAI claims $20 billion ARR by year’s end

3. Big Tech takes sides in Anthropic, OpenAI rivalry

STARTUPS

Perplexity, Snap ink $400 million partnership

As tech giants set their sights on enterprise customers, Perplexity might be targeting a younger demographic. 

The AI search firm announced on Thursday that it’s partnering with Snap to integrate its answer engine into Snapchat. As part of the deal, Perplexity will pay Snap $400 million over the course of a year through a combination of cash and equity, with the companies expecting revenue from the partnership in 2026. 

“Millions of people connect and discover the world through Snapchat,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said in the announcement. “By bringing Perplexity to Snapchat, we’re able to serve that curiosity directly where it occurs.” 

For Snap, an AI partnership like this could be a huge benefit. Though the company’s MyAI chatbot has seen solid growth in daily active users, it’s struggled to stand out among rivals like Meta, which also seeks to capture user attention with AI. Partnering with Perplexity could give its AI strategy more legitimacy, helping reposition it as an “AI-enhanced platform” rather than just a social media firm, Ido Caspi, research analyst at Global X, told The Deep View. 

Plus, as Snap has struggled to expand its ad business, “this diversification could reduce Snap’s reliance on cyclical ad revenue and boost margins over time if engagement scales successfully,” said Caspi. 

As for Perplexity, this deal could help expose its AI to a large swathe of young users. In the announcement, Snap noted that its user base of 943 million consists 75% of users between the ages of 13 and 34. 

However, with $1.5 billion in funding as of its latest round, $400 million is a large chunk of change for Perplexity to cough up. The AI firm may be betting a lot on the pull that Snap has among its users.

Though this partnership could recommend a win-win for Snap and Perplexity, allowing young users, particularly minors, free rein of AI products can get sticky. Snap has already gotten in hot water with regulators for MyAI’s potential “risks and harms to young users.” While more tech firms are integrating AI into consumer apps frequented by young users, “These systems aren't ready, and families and teens are even less prepared for the risks,” Robbie Torney, senior director of AI Programs at Common Sense Media, told The Deep View.

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MARKETS

OpenAI claims $20 billion ARR by year’s end

Sam Altman is addressing the elephant in the room. 

The OpenAI CEO on Thursday said in a post on X that the company is on track to earn more than $20 billion in annualized revenue run rate this year, with a path to bring in “hundreds of billion by 2030.”

The figure is a stark jump from the $13 billion in revenue that the company’s CFO Sarah Friar claimed in September. But it’s still a far cry from the $1.4 trillion in infrastructure deals with massive tech firms, which have raised concerns that the company won’t be able to cover its commitments. 

Altman said that while “each doubling” of revenue is hard earned, the company is “feeling good about our prospects there,” noting that enterprise offerings, consumer devices and robotics could become promising revenue categories. Altman also alluded to directly selling compute capacity to companies and consumers. 

As for the rapid pace and magnitude of the infrastructure buildout itself, Altman said the risks of not aggressively building out AI data centers are greater than having too much compute power. 

“We are trying to build the infrastructure for a future economy powered by AI, and given everything we see on the horizon in our research program, this is the time to invest to be really scaling up our technology,” Altman said. 

Addressing criticism that OpenAI had eyed a federal backstop for its infrastructure investments, Altman said in his post that “taxpayers should not bail out companies that make bad business decisions or otherwise lose in the market.” 

Though Altman has full confidence that OpenAI will be a “wildly successful company,” achieving the kind of exponential growth that it’s banking on hinges not just on widespread adoption, but a large pool of users – both enterprise and consumer – willing to pay for OpenAI’s services. 

And despite the fact that OpenAI now has deep financial ties with practically every major tech power player, “if we get it wrong, that’s on us,” Altman said. “If one company fails, other companies will do good work.”

TOGETHER WITH INCOGNI

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BIG TECH

Big Tech takes sides in Anthropic, OpenAI rivalry

Anthropic may soon notch another win in the AI race. 

The company is reportedly in early talks with Google to raise a fresh round of funding, according to Business Insider. The investment may also take the form of offering Anthropic access to additional cloud computing resources. 

Though it’s unclear how much Google would invest in the round, it could value Anthropic at more than $350 billion, nearly doubling its current valuation of $183 billion, which it achieved after its September funding round. 

The rumored investment deepens the two companies' existing relationship:

  • In October, Anthropic announced a partnership with Google Cloud that would give it access to more than one million of its TPU chips. Without revealing exact financial figures, companies claimed that the deal is “worth tens of billions of dollars.”

  • Google also has invested more than $3 billion in Anthropic, according to the New York Times. 

These deals highlight that two main sides of the AI battles are emerging: Anthropic and OpenAI. OpenAI has largely soaked up the spotlight in recent months, forging eye-popping partnerships with tech firms like Oracle, Nvidia, Amazon and more to build out AI infrastructure worth hundreds of billions of dollars, notching the title of the most valuable private company in the world with a valuation of $500 billion and laying the groundwork for a $1 trillion IPO.

But Anthropic hasn’t been sitting idly by. The company has secured a number of massive enterprise partnerships with Deloitte, Salesforce and IBM, and has its sights set on $70 million in revenue with positive cash flow by 2028 (compared to OpenAI sitting deeply in the red due to its $1.4 trillion in commitments). The rumored funding round is the latest signal that the rivalry, backed by some of the biggest players in tech, is reaching a fever pitch.

LINKS

  • Odyssey-2: A second-generation interactive AI video model.

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  • Gemini Deep Research: Google Gemini can now pull context from your Gmail, Drive and chats for more context-aware reports.

  • Brickwise: An AI property management system that automates maintenance and handles tenant calls.

  • Opal: Google Labs’ no-code AI app builder is now available in more than 160 countries.

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GAMES

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The Deep View is written by Nat Rubio-Licht, Faris Kojok, and The Deep View crew. Please reply with any feedback.

Thanks for reading today’s edition of The Deep View! We’ll see you in the next one.

“The bulbs are properly spaced in the real image.”

“This one was tough. When I zoomed in and saw people at what appeared to be a wedding, it felt more real than the blurry holiday lights. ”

“The lights in the other image were different shaped bulbs but all the glowing lights were showing round in the picture so that led me to think it was fake”

“The blurred lights made it appear more authentic. Because [the other option] was so crisp and clear, I thought it was AI. ”

“I should have known better, as AI loves bokeh effect”

“It would be cool to get a little more info on the AI vs non AI generated images, aka how to spot AI generated stuff” We will definitely see what we can do for future editions! Stay tuned :)

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