As of July 27, 2024, DuckDuckGo's valuation for 2024 was unknown, as it was not disclosed in the $118.6 million Series C round raised in June 2021. The Series B round in June 2018 valued DuckDuckGo at $74.8 million.
Then there’s this which prolly killed the valuation when users felt they were conned.
In May 2022, a security researcher at Bleeping Computer discovered that Microsoft's trackers continued to run in DuckDuckGo's Private Browser while visiting non-DuckDuckGo websites. This was in contrast to Google and Facebook trackers, which were blocked. The discovery seemed to contradict the search engine's promise of privacy.
DuckDuckGo's founder and CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, explained on Reddit that the company was contractually obligated to Microsoft and unable to stop Microsoft scripts from loading completely. This was because DuckDuckGo uses Microsoft's Bing to power its search results. Weinberg said, "unfortunately, our Microsoft search syndication agreement prevents us from doing more to Microsoft-owned properties. However, we have been continually pushing and expect to be doing more soon". In August 2022, DuckDuckGo announced that it would further restrict Microsoft trackers in its browsers.
Maybe mONI could have the first search engine that doesn’t use Bing or Google.