According to insiders, the startup behind You.com is raising $50 million in new capital to secure a position in the burgeoning artificial intelligence assistant market.
The four-year-old company, named SuSea Inc, is about to complete a Series B funding round which will bring its valuation to between $700 million and $900 million, according to insiders. Since its launch, You.com has recorded 1 billion queries.
Interest in You.com’s AI search engine surged after ChatGPT garnered attention in early 2023, leading some users to explore other platforms. Microsoft introduced its AI chatbot for the Bing search engine, while Alphabet's Google added AI-generated answers for more complex queries.
According to Similarweb, You.com had 11 million visits in May, reflecting this year’s growth in web traffic, though it remains below the peak of 20 million visits in February 2023. Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower noted that downloads of the You.com app have declined by approximately 69% so far in 2024 compared to the same period last year. Other AI startups are facing similar challenges.
Against this backdrop, the Palo Alto, California-based company has transformed You.com into an AI assistant focused on productivity and internet search, according to its website.
Its CEO, former Salesforce chief scientist Richard Socher, told Reuters earlier this year that You.com can write articles or code computer programs, and can navigate numerous technologies to determine the correct answers to user queries.
