The rabbit r1 will use Perplexity AI’s tech to answer your queries

One of the standout gadgets of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the rabbit r1, will use Perplexity AI’s tech to answer user queries, both companies said in an announcement.

Perplexity noted that the first 100,000 r1 buyers will get one year of Perplexity Pro for free.

The $200 r1 made rounds at the CES show as an AI-first gadget that saves you the hassle of taking your phone out for tasks like performing web searches, playing a song on Spotify, and ordering a cab. The device doesn’t have a monthly subscription fee at the moment.

The device, designed by Teenage Engineering, has a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a push-to-talk button, a camera, a speaker, and two mics.

The company has already sold 50,000 devices in pre-orders. Earlier today, it opened pre-orders for the 6th production batch with another 50,000 devices. Rabbit said that customers living in the EU and UK will all receive their device by the end of July even if they just pre-order a device from the 6th batch.

Perplexity uses a mix of its own AI model as well as third-party models — Google’s Gemini, Mistra 7B, Anthropic’s Claude 2.1, and OpenAI’s GPT-4  — to get accurate information from the web. The tool has a chatbot interface on the web and mobile apps to let users ask questions in natural language. While Perplexity’s solution is different than traditional search engines, it competes with Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Copilot along with You.com in the GenAI search space.

Earlier this month, Perplexity AI raised $73.6 million in investment — at a $520 million valuation — led by IVP with additional investments from NEA, Databricks Ventures, Nvidia, former Twitter VP Elad Gil, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, and Jeff Bezos.