Perplexity.ai, one of the major AI search engines, launched a new AI shopping assistant accompanied by an easy to use Merchant Program for online e-commerce businesses for adding product data to the AI search engine.

The AI shopping assistant provides 1-click checkout and one of its innovative features is Snap to Shop, a visual search tool that allows customers to take a picture of the product that they want to purchase after which the AI manages the search and purchase.

Financial Advantages for Shoppers

Perplexity.ai offers shoppers financial advantages to stimulate them to use the service, which includes free shipping.

Partnership with Shopify and Other E-commerce Platforms

Perplexity.ai has partnered with Shopify and other big e-commerce platforms which enables shoppers to shop at millions of webshops globally directly from within their Perplexity.ai environment.

Perplexity Merchant Program

Perplexity.ai offers a merchant program that enables e-commerce businesses to share their product data with the AI search engine, ensuring that Perplexity can provide real-time details on available products.

The program is free for merchants and according to Perplexity.ai, it is designed to be easy to use for e-commerce business owners.

According to Perplexity.ai, the Merchant Platform provides the following benefits:

• Increased chances of being a recommended product because the products will be in our index, and when we have more robust details, we can better determine if a product is high quality and relevant to a user's query.
• Payment integrations to include merchants in our one-click Buy with Pro checkout experience.
• Free API access so merchants can build their own Perplexity-powered search experiences, with the ability to refine the index to include only your products.
• A custom dashboard that gives merchants insights into search and shopping trends that surface their products.

Source

Access is initially limited to US companies and bigger online retailers. However, in some cases, Perplexity.ai might allow access to smaller businesses or businesses from other countries upon request.

About Perplexity.ai

In December 2024, Perplexity AI closed a $500 million funding round, led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). This round valued the company at $9 billion, tripling its valuation within six months. Prior to this, in June 2024, Perplexity raised approximately $250 million at a $3 billion valuation, with investors including IVP, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and SoftBank. In April 2024, the company secured a $62.7 million Series B extension led by Daniel Gross, which valued Perplexity at $1 billion post-money. Earlier in January 2024, Perplexity raised $73.6 million in the first part of its Series B round, led by IVP and other investors.

In total, according to Business Insider as of January 2025, Perplexity has secured $914 million in funding to date.

www.perplexity.ai/shopping

Source:

(2024) Official Press Release of Perplexity.ai Source: Perplexity.ai | Merchant Program Info | Signup Form