AI startup Perplexity adds shopping features as search competition tightens

Artificial intelligence search startup Perplexity on Monday launched a shopping hub to attract users, in a bid to beef up its platform as it attempts to take on Alphabet-owned Google's dominance in the search engine space.

The firm, backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and leading AI chipmaker Nvidia, will give users product cards showing relevant items in response to questions related to shopping.

Each card provides product details in a visual format, the company said.

The new feature is powered by platform integrations including Shopify, which gives access to recent and relevant information on products from businesses on the Canadian e-commerce platform globally that ship to the United States.

E-commerce platforms have focused on employing more AI-powered tools in an effort to pull in more merchants.

Perplexity's online shopping-focused rollout includes 'Snap to Shop' - a visual search tool that shows products based on users' photos of an item.

The features are first launching in the United States and will later expand to other markets, the timeline for which was not specified.

Perplexity is also introducing a 'Merchant Program' to allow retailers to share product information with the company.

The startup is raising new investment that would value it at $9 billion, Reuters had reported earlier in November.

Perplexity has been looking to expand its offerings, with OpenAI now a direct competitor after the generative AI pioneer added a set of new search functions to ChatGPT.