Both firms announced that the rabbit r1, a CES highlight, will integrate Perplexity AI to answer customer questions.
Perplexity will give the first 100,000 R1 purchasers a free year of Pro.
The AI-first $200 r1 made its CES debut as a phone-free way to surf the web, play Spotify, and summon a cab. The gadget currently has no monthly charge.
Teenage Engineering’s 2.88-inch touchscreen phone contains a push-to-talk button, camera, speaker, and two mics.
It sold 50,000 pre-ordered units. Pre-orders for the 6th production batch with 50,000 devices began today. Rabbit said all EU and UK clients will receive their devices by July, even if they pre-ordered the 6th batch.
Perplexity employs its own AI model with Google’s Gemini, Mistra 7B, Anthropic’s Claude 2.1, and OpenAI’s GPT-4 to obtain correct web data. The tool’s online and mobile chatbot lets users ask natural language inquiries. Despite its unique approach, Perplexity competes with Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s Copilot, and You.com in GenAI search.
IVP, NEA, Databricks Ventures, Nvidia, former Twitter VP Elad Gil, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, and Jeff Bezos invested $73.6 million in Perplexity AI earlier this month at a $520 million valuation.
