Choosing Airbyte to power the most helpful knowledge engine for consumers

Building a scalable, cost-effective data management system is going to be fraught with challenges. In Perplexity AI’s case, they use data and AI to power their own search engine to answer questions and provide insights in a way that’s really easy and quick for anyone to use. So why did Perplexity AI make the decision to integrate Airbyte into their infrastructure? Let’s dive into that!

Identifying the Challenge

At its core, Perplexity AI's mission is to utilize data and AI to provide their users with unparalleled access to information. As the company evolved, so did the volume of data.

The challenge with that is to find a solution that could scale efficiently with the size of the team as well as the data itself. Costing less sounds pretty good too. Initially, the company grappled with managing a complex data ecosystem, which included transferring data from PostgreSQL to Snowflake and integrating other tooling to support their data stack. Not to mention that at the time, they were a one-person data team which in it of itself, comes with even more challenges.

The Solution

The turning point for Perplexity AI came with the discovery of Airbyte. There are a few key reasons why Perplexity chose to go with Airbyte.

• Ease of Use - Airbyte's compatibility with Perplexity AI's existing technologies, such as PostgreSQL and Snowflake, in addition to the intuitive interface, offered an easy transition for them to test and integrate Airbyte into their data infrastructure. They chose to buy instead of build given the fact that the size of the team was one person. 
• Reliability - Perplexity has a lot of data that they are working with. The solution they choose needs to be able to handle all this data but also support their growth as well at scale. With Airbyte, the integrations for each data source is already built out for them and have been tested to ensure they are reliable. So now, Perplexity is in the process of transitioning the connectors from their other vendors to Airbyte.
• No Vendor Lock-In - With the availability of Airbyte’s open-source version, Perplexity doesn’t need to worry about any vendor lock-in which was very key for them. That added flexibility gives them peace of mind when looking down the road in the future.
• Pricing Scalability - Having a solution that is able to scale its pricing was also very important. When evaluating  Airbyte and other ELT vendors, Airbyte made the most sense when looking at the growth of their team and the company when it came to keeping costs manageable. 

The Outcome

The implementation of Airbyte not only aligned with their immediate needs but also supported their growth trajectory, enabling the company to scale its data operations without the threat of escalating costs. The platform was also easy to use and understand. This would result in less time onboarding and training new team members on the data stack so they could focus more on bringing impact to the team. With a single person data team, it was important to have a solution that just worked, allowing for more flexibility and time to work on the actual product to bring in more value.

What’s next

Now that they have the right data stack with the right models, they have been able to develop a deep understanding of their product. Their next focus is still on product data but this time going deeper with supporting A/B testing and more. 

Conclusion

In the end, Perplexity AI’s decision on integrating Airbyte as the foundation for their data infrastructure has given them not only the piece of mind, but also relief from the stresses that come from being a one-person data team. The value of being able to scale and execute at a high level by maximizing resources is immense. No matter if you’re a one-person team or ten, having a tool that is simple, easy to use, scalable and most importantly reliable is important to have at the foundation of your data infrastructure.