Perplexity bought Carbon, a four-person data-connector startup, for its answer engine

Carbon builds the plumbing that lets large language models pull unstructured data from third-party applications like Google Drive and SharePoint.

Whoever connects an AI answer engine to personal and enterprise data wins daily-workflow relevance, so the connectors should be bought, not rebuilt.

Derek Tu and Aditya Chempakasseril, longtime friends who had worked together at e-commerce company Italic, founded Carbon in 2022 — Tu describes it as starting as 'sketches on a WeWork whiteboard in Seattle'.

Carbon grew into a four-person company whose connectors were used by many generative AI companies to link external data to LLMs, raising $1.3 million in 2023.

Perplexity — an OpenAI rival valued at $9 billion — acquired Carbon in December 2024; its four employees joined Perplexity, with Tu calling it a 'solid outcome' for investors and team.

Personal-data connectivity was the next capability an AI answer engine needed to be useful at work.

Carbon's connectors already served many generative AI companies, so the integration risk was low.

A four-person team made the deal cheap relative to building the integrations in-house.

For the founders, acquisition converted a small seed-round company into a distributed product.

Selling picks-and-shovels to every AI company makes you visible to exactly the acquirers who need your layer next — and four people plus integrations can be enough.

As of the 18 December 2024 announcement the Carbon team had joined Perplexity to wire external data sources into its answer engine.