Perplexity’s acquisition of Carbon will connect your internal data to search

The AI search startup Perplexity has acquired Carbon, a data integration framework provider, to enhance enterprise search capabilities and bridge the gap between public and private data sources.

Strategic acquisition overview: Perplexity’s purchase of Carbon marks a significant expansion of its AI search capabilities, particularly in the enterprise sector.

• The acquisition comes after Perplexity’s successful year, which included raising hundreds of millions in funding and reaching a $9 billion valuation
• Carbon’s technology provides a universal API and SDKs that connect external data sources to large language models (LLMs)
• The framework supports over 20 data connectors and file formats, including text, audio, and video

Technical capabilities and integration: Carbon’s retrieval framework will enable Perplexity to offer more comprehensive search functionality across enterprise data sources.

• The integration will allow users to connect various data sources, from Google Docs and Notion to Hubspot and Slack
• Carbon’s retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows will make enterprise search more accessible by eliminating the need for companies to build their own RAG pipelines
• The system will be able to correlate information across multiple data sources to provide more contextual and accurate answers

Enterprise applications: The enhanced platform will address key business use cases and improve workflow efficiency.

• Users will be able to search across internal documents, communications, and databases without needing to specify the exact location of information
• The system can extract customer meeting insights from connected CRMs quickly and efficiently
• Teams can access deadline information and guidelines by searching across multiple collaboration tools simultaneously

Security and privacy considerations: Data protection remains a critical focus for the integrated platform.

• All information from internal and private sources will be encrypted, including data transmitted and stored in Carbon’s connectors
• Additional protections will ensure private documents remain accessible only to authorized users
• Enterprise customers will maintain control over their intellectual property within their own firewalls

Transition timeline and impact: The integration process will affect existing Carbon customers and shape future enterprise AI search capabilities.

• Carbon’s managed API will cease operations on March 31, 2025
• Current Carbon customers have been notified and will receive assistance during the transition period
• No specific timeline has been announced for the complete integration of Carbon’s technology into Perplexity’s platform

Market implications: The acquisition positions Perplexity to compete more effectively in the enterprise AI search space while addressing a crucial market need for handling unstructured data, potentially setting new standards for how businesses interact with their internal knowledge bases and making AI search more practical for enterprise use cases.