Quora Inc., the parent company of the popular Q&A platform Quora and the artificial intelligence chat platform Poe, has successfully raised $75 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Quora’s chief executive officer Adam D’Angelo announced on Wednesday that the new influx of funding will be used to transform Poe.
The company aims to transform the AI platform into the go-to interface for interacting with a diverse range of AI products. With the current $75M capital influx, the business is valued at $500M.
“We see Poe’s role with respect to AI being similar to the role the web browser played in accelerating progress during the development of the early internet,” Adam D’Angelo said in a blog. With this vision in mind, Poe will focus on two key goals: becoming the most seamless way for consumers to chat with various AI creations, and the easiest platform for developers to build and launch their own AI chat products.
A significant portion of the funding will be directly invested in Poe’s creator monetization program, empowering developers to build profitable businesses on the platform and attract even more talent to the AI ecosystem. This approach fosters a “creator economy” for AI, mirroring the success of similar models seen in other tech spheres.
Beyond enriching developers, Quora’s Poe also aims to democratize access to AI for consumers and smaller research groups. By providing a user-friendly platform and tools, the platform empowers individuals and smaller players with limited resources to reach a massive audience with their AI innovations.
While Poe takes center stage with this injection of capital, Quora itself remains a core focus. “The Quora product remains critical to our mission to share and grow the world’s knowledge. It continues to steadily grow — last week was our highest usage week ever — and with over 400M monthly unique visitors, we will continue to invest in Quora with the majority of our employees,” D’Angelo added.
