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Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine that competes with Google and ChatGPT, has partnered with identity verification company SheerID to offer up to two years of free premium service to more than 264 million students worldwide, the companies announced Monday.
The deal tackles a key challenge for AI companies: providing educational access to expensive tools while preventing discount fraud. Perplexity is betting heavily on the education market as competition for users intensifies across the industry.
Under the agreement, verified students can access Perplexity Pro, normally priced at $20 per month, through SheerID’s verification platform that connects to more than 200,000 authoritative data sources across 190 countries. The program will be available to all university and post-secondary students globally where SheerID provides verification, making 264 million students eligible worldwide. The offering includes features like cited research, in-depth reports, and interactive AI applications.
The partnership comes as AI adoption surges among students, with 86% of U.S. students using AI tools to support their studies, according to the companies. However, the rapid growth has sparked concerns about academic integrity and the need for AI tools designed specifically for educational use.
How advanced verification technology stops sophisticated student discount fraud
SheerID, a Portland-based company founded in 2011, has built its business around solving a persistent problem for retailers and service providers: verifying that consumers actually belong to groups eligible for special discounts, such as students, military personnel, or healthcare workers.
“We verify that customer audience data, and then we enrich that brand CRM with this first party data, so that they can fully engage their most loyal audiences,” explained Rebecca Grimes, Chief Revenue Officer at SheerID, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “Our platform is built so that we can deliver this seamless, secure and fast experience for their consumers.”
The verification process begins with basic information like name, date of birth, and university. SheerID immediately checks this against authoritative data sources, which Grimes said the company has built relationships with over 14 years in business. If instant verification fails, the system moves to document review using both AI-powered analysis and manual verification.
“If we are unable to process that through our authoritative data sources, then there is an incremental step where you add a document upload,” Grimes said. “Once that goes into our system that is another layer of supplemental review that is both automated through our AI document review process as well as, in some cases, manual doc review.”
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