Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals that competed with LinkedIn, has been acquired by AI-powered search engine Perplexity.
As part of the deal, Read.cv will begin winding down operations on Friday. Users will be able to export their data, including their profiles, posts and messages, until May 16.
“We’ve long admired Perplexity, and we believe great things happen when the world’s knowledge becomes more open and accessible,” reads a post on Read.cv’s blog. “In that spirit, we are excited to be joining the design and engineering team at Perplexity to continue on our shared mission of exploration and discovery.”
Today I’m excited to share it @read_cv is joining the team at @perplexity_ai in their mission to make the world’s knowledge more accessible to all. This is extremely bittersweet for us, as the beginning of this new chapter will mark the end of our time with @read_cv.
She has… pic.twitter.com/6CUinOEGsi
— andy chung (@_andychung) January 17, 2025
A spokesperson for Perplexity confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch via email, but did not provide additional details.
“We’re excited to have the Read.cv team join Perplexity,” wrote Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas in a post on X. “The team is incredibly skilled at designing and building consumer and social experiences, and we look forward to working with them in many exciting new directions!”
Read.cv, which was founded in 2021 by Andy Chung, formerly a product designer at Facebook, Mozilla and Salesforce-owned Quip, offered a variety of tools that let users share their resumes and chat with other professionals in their industries. Read.cv also offered capabilities aimed at organizations, such as team profiles and the ability to post job listings and conduct candidate research.
Recently, Read.cv launched Sites, a feature that allows users to publish a personal website using their Read.cv profile. Users could also get a “.cv” domain from Read.cv and link it to their profile if they wanted.
Read.cv says it plans to migrate “.cv” domains starting January 31 to its Hello.cv partners, where users will be able to continue managing them.
Perplexity’s plans for West Berkeley-based Read.cv, which had about three employees and was backed by funding from F7 Ventures and Fanjul Capital, are unclear. But Perplexity has increasingly invested in enterprise-focused functionality, last summer launching an enterprise plan with user management, “internal knowledge search” and more.
The moves may be in part at the behest of the VCs backing Perplexity, who are no doubt eager to see a comeback sooner rather than later. Perplexity has reportedly raised over $500 million in capital 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 AI systems with external data sources. In 2023, Perplexity acquired Spellwise, whose CEO was tapped to develop Perplexity’s mobile app.
TechCrunch has an AI-focused newsletter! Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.
