Perplexity AI makes unsolicited $34.5bn bid to buy Google Chrome

This is the 2nd large connection the AI startup has made this twelvemonth to bargain a large asset. In January, it offered to bargain TikTok.

Perplexity AI said it has made a $34.5bn unsolicited all-cash connection for Alphabet’s Google Chrome browser.

The deal, if Alphabet agreed to it, would besides necessitate financing supra the startup’s astir precocious reported valuation of $18bn.

The astir three-year-old startup’s acquisition of Chrome, if approved, would springiness the institution entree to its much than 3 cardinal users arsenic regulatory unit weighs connected Google’s power implicit the tech industry.

Perplexity did not disclose connected Tuesday however it plans to money the offer, but has raised $1bn successful backing from investors including SoftBank and the semiconductor chip elephantine Nvidia.

Several funds person said they would concern the woody successful afloat if Alphabet accepts, the Reuters quality bureau reported citing unnamed sources acquainted with the matter.

Alphabet has not offered to merchantability Chrome and has planned to entreaty a United States tribunal ruling that said Google held an unlawful monopoly implicit the online hunt marketplace. The US Department of Justice has said that divestiture of Chrome would assistance remedy that case. A national justice is expected to regularisation connected remedies for the lawsuit aboriginal this month.

Web browsers arsenic captious gateways

As a caller procreation of users turns to chatbots specified arsenic ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers, web browsers are regaining prominence arsenic captious gateways to hunt postulation and prized idiosyncratic data, making them cardinal to Big Tech’s AI ambitions.

Perplexity already has an AI browser, Comet, that tin execute definite tasks connected a user’s behalf. Buying Chrome would let it to pat the browser’s much than 3 cardinal users, giving it the heft to amended vie with bigger rivals specified arsenic OpenAI. The ChatGPT genitor is besides moving connected its ain AI browser.

Perplexity, tally by CEO Aravind Srinivas, has said it volition support the browser’s codification unfastened root and marque nary changes to the default hunt engine, according to Reuters.

The San Francisco-based startup is acold from the lone institution to explicit involvement successful Google Chrome. ChatGPT proprietor OpenAI has besides expressed interest, arsenic has Yahoo and New York-based backstage equity steadfast Apollo Global Management.

It is not the archetypal eye-catching bid from the AI startup this year. In January, Perplexity AI offered to bargain TikTok aft regulators called for the Chinese-owned app to beryllium sold to a US company. The White House has delayed the prohibition respective times. The astir caller hold was announced successful precocious June.

Neither Google nor Perplexity instantly responded to Al Jazeera’s petition for comment.

On Wall Street, Alphabet’s stock terms surged up 1.4 percent since the marketplace opened. Potential funder Nvidia is comparatively flat, lone up astir 0.1 percent. However, SoftBank is surging up much than 6.9 percent arsenic of 1pm successful New York (17:00 GMT). Perplexity is not a publically traded company.