Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals that competes with LinkedIn, has been acquired by artificial intelligence-powered search engine Perplexity.
As part of the deal, Read.cv will cease operations starting on Friday. Until May 16, users will be able to export their data, including their profiles, posts, and messages.
"We have long admired Perplexity and believe that when the world's knowledge becomes more open and accessible, great things can happen," reads a post on the Read.cv blog. “In this spirit, we are excited to join Perplexity’s design and engineering team to continue our shared mission of exploration and discovery.”
I'm happy to share with you today @read_cv Time to join the team is @perplexity_ai Their mission is to make the world's knowledge more accessible to everyone. This is incredibly bittersweet for us as the beginning of this new chapter will mark the end of our era @read_cv.
It has... pic.twitter.com/6CUinOEGsi
— Andy Chung (@_andychung) January 17, 2025
A Perplexity spokesperson confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch via email but did not provide further details.
"We're excited to have the Read.cv team join Perplexity," Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas wrote in a post on There are so many exciting new directions to work with!”
Read.cv, founded in 2021 by Andy Chung, a former product designer at Facebook, Mozilla, and Salesforce-owned Quip, provides a series of tools that allow users to share resumes and chat with other professionals in the industry. Read.cv also offers organization-specific features, such as team profiles and the ability to post job listings and perform candidate searches.
Recently, Read.cv launched the Sites feature, which allows users to publish personal websites using their Read.cv profiles. If desired, users can even obtain a ".cv" domain name from Read.cv and connect it to their profile.
Read.cv said it plans to migrate ".cv" domain names to its partner Hello.cv starting on January 31, and users will be able to continue to manage them.
Perplexity's plans for West Berkeley-based Read.cv, which has about three employees and is backed by funding from F7 Ventures and Fanjul Capital, are unclear. But Perplexity is increasingly investing in enterprise-focused features, launching an Enterprise plan last summer that includes user management, single sign-on and more.
These moves may be driven in part by requests from the venture capital firms backing Perplexity, who are no doubt eager to see an early return. Perplexity has reportedly raised more than $500 million from investors including Institutional Venture Partners and is said to be valued at $9 billion.
Read.cv is Perplexity's third acquisition, following the acquisition of Carbon, which specializes in connecting artificial intelligence systems to external data sources. In 2023, Perplexity acquired Spellwise, whose CEO was appointed to develop Perplexity's mobile app.