Quora, the renowned questions and answers platform, has successfully raised $75 million in funding, marking its first funding round in nearly seven years. The substantial investment comes from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and is earmarked to fuel the expansion of Quora's AI chat platform, Poe. Unlike traditional AI chatbots, Quora aims to carve its niche within the creator economy by encouraging users to build and monetize their own AI bots.Quora's unique strategy involves the development of a creator economy centered around AI chatbots. With the fresh funding, the company plans to primarily compensate creators participating in its platform through the recently introduced creator monetization program. This initiative, launched in October, enables individuals creating bots or prompts on Poe to generate revenue, extending the opportunity to developers who integrate bots with the Poe AI.

Quora places a significant emphasis on creators and, with this substantial funding, seeks to attract talented developers to Poe by promising financial compensation. Poe aggregates various text and image AI models, including notable ones like ChatGPT and DALL-E 3, providing creators with a diverse range of tools to explore and utilize.Quora's valuation, once at approximately $1.8 billion during its 2017 VC funding round, has now experienced a decline to $500 million. Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo attributes this shift to market changes, influenced by rising interest rates and a higher cost of capital. Despite the lowered valuation, the company expresses contentment in aligning with the current market dynamics.

Since the launch of Poe about a year ago, Quora has observed notable growth. D’Angelo revealed that Quora experienced its highest usage week ever recently, boasting over 400 million monthly unique visitors. While Quora, excluding Poe, is cash flow positive, the newly acquired funding will be exclusively allocated to further develop Poe. The mobile app for Poe has garnered significant attention, with over 18.4 million installs and close to 1.22 million monthly active users, making it one of the top 5 largest generative AI-related properties.