Quora raised $75M from Andreessen Horowitz to fund Poe and its monetization program

Quora first launched Poe (Platform for Open Exploration) nearly a year ago as an independent product of its Quora product. Even though one of the company's end goals is to evolve the Quora product using AI, the decision to handle Poe as a separate product for the time being was made considering the issues associated with the rapid development that AI research is currently experiencing. Thus, Poe was launched to become "the best way for consumers to chat with a variety of AI products" and "the easiest way for a developer to build an AI chat product and reach a mass audience."

Quora has launched Poe with the expectation that it will democratize access not only to AI but to the creativity it can spark and, even more importantly, to the knowledge that AI-powered chatbots can help disseminate. In particular, Quora has committed to enable creators and small companies that may not have the necessary resources to deploy marketable AI-powered products to generate sufficient revenue off the platform to make a living or operate profitably. Aligning with this commitment, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo has stated that the $75M raised from Andreessen Horowitz will be invested in accelerating the Poe platform, with most of the funding going towards the creator monetization program.

Currently, Poe's other major source of funding is a subscription program with monthly and yearly payment options. The paid tier removes the messaging limits on 'popular' chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude-Instant, and enables limited access to more powerful models. For instance, paying subscribers get a 600-message limit for GPT-4 and a 1000-message limit for Claude-2-100K. Considering that Quora is footing the bill for model access via its platform and working towards making the creator program profitable for its members, the investment and the opportunity to a16z Growth team is an excellent way for Poe to kick off the year.