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Here's what we're serving up today:

• In Search of Something Better 🔍

• Gaming No More? 🎮

In Search of Something Better 🔍

My lifetime basketball shooting percentage is probably 0.0002%, yet, I hereby challenge LeBron James to a 1:1 game of hoops.

That’s roughly the equivalent of any startup looking at Google’s search dominance and saying, “Sure, we can take ‘em.”

Enter Perplexity: An AI-Search startup founded in 2023 readying its shot at Google’s throne.

In case you didn’t notice, a thing called ‘AI’ has been all the rage since last year. There’s an AI for everything now.

But what about Search? 

Sure, there’s ChatGPT. But it’s got its issues with the knowledge cut-off date. And when it does stick around, it’s using Bing, which is … well, it’s Bing.

Google has Bard which is honestly meh at best. 

What you’re looking for is Perplexity. Their AI based search is the best we’ve come across until now.

Its answers are concise and to the point, it includes citations and best of all, it doesn’t have an overly cutesy, distracting personality!

Big Names and Big Money

If you’ve never heard of Perplexity, don’t be mistaken into thinking it’s just another startup. 

The head honcho? Aravind Srinivas, a veteran of OpenAI and DeepMind.

The money? The company recently raised a mammoth $100 million round from IVP at a $520 million valuation. 

Their investor list is definitely one to gawk at:

• NVIDIA

• Jeff Bezos

• Shopify CEO - Tobi Lutke

• Ex-Youtube CEO - Susan Wojcicki

• Ex-GitHub CEO - Nat Friedman

The company of course has a looong way to go. It makes only about $5M-$10M from subscriptions, but it boasts some pretty impressive usage statistics. 

They claim to have 10M monthly active users with 500M+ queries served. That obviously pales in comparison to Google ~8.5b searches daily, but hey, you gotta start somewhere right?

Check them out here → Perplexity.

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Gaming No More? 🎮

It’s been a rough year for gaming startup investments. Let’s just say investors aren’t exactly ready to press the play button when it comes to these companies.

In the land of gaming startups, it seems the money tree has stopped bearing fruit. According to Crunchbase, investment in these pixelated playgrounds hit a low not seen in years. 

The Numbers

Globally, gaming investments in 2023 did a spectacular dive, plummeting 79% from the previous year.

The U.S. said, "Hold my controller" and did even better – or worse, depending on how you look at it – with an 86% drop. Ouch!

In 2023, the late-stage investment scene was as quiet as a library, missing the big $100 million deals and IPO fanfare.

This was a stark difference from the bustling market of 2022, where companies like Epic Games were collecting whopping $2 billion investments.

But why this change? Well, when everyone was stuck at home, video games were the go-to. Now, people are venturing out more, and spending habits are shifting. 

It's Not Exactly Game Over

Despite the investment struggles, the broader gaming industry wasn't exactly in doom-and-gloom mode.

Big names like Take-Two, EA, Nintendo, and Sony were strutting around with share prices puffing out their chests. 

Microsoft even broke records by acquiring Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.

The twist is, these success stories are mostly from the industry's big fish. It's like they've built a fort and aren't letting the new kids play. 

Let’s just hope 2024 brings about a more favorable investment climate for the gaming industry. 2023’s investment numbers were so low, it won't take much to see an improvement!

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