Perplexity AI makes $34.5B all-cash offer for Google Chrome browser | Latest Tech News
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Perplexity AI said it has made a $34.5 billion unsolicited all-cash offer for Alphabet’s Chrome browser, a low but daring bid that would need financing nicely above the startup’s own valuation.
Run by Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity is no stranger to headline-grabbing affords — it made a comparable one for TikTok US in January, offering to merge with the favored short-video app to resolve US issues about TikTok’s Chinese possession.
Buying Chrome would enable the startup to faucet the browser’s more than three billion customers for an edge in the AI search race as regulatory stress threatens Google’s grip on the industry.
Buying Chrome would enable Perplexity to faucet the browser’s more than three billion customers for an edge in the AI search race as regulatory stress threatens Google’s grip on the industry. Bloomberg
Google didn’t immediately reply to a GWN request for remark.
The company has not supplied Chrome for sale and plans to appeal a US court ruling last yr that discovered it held an illegal monopoly in online search.
The Justice Department has sought a Chrome divestiture as half of the case’s remedies.
Perplexity didn’t disclose on Tuesday how it plans to fund the offer.
The three-year-old company has raised around $1 billion in funding so far from buyers including Nvidia and Japan’s SoftBank. It was last valued at $14 billion.
Multiple funds have supplied to finance the deal in full, a individual acquainted with the matter said, without naming the funds.
As a new technology of customers turns to chatbots such as ChatGPT and Perplexity for solutions, web browsers are regaining prominence as very important gateways to search visitors and prized consumer data, making them central to Big Tech’s AI ambitions.
Perplexity already has an AI browser, Comet, that can carry out sure duties on a consumer’s behalf and buying Chrome would give it the heft to better compete against larger rivals such as OpenAI.
Perplexity, headed by CEO Aravind Srinivas, has supplied to buy TikTok. Getty Images for Gold House
The ChatGPT mother or father has also expressed curiosity in shopping for Chrome and is working on its own AI browser.
Perplexity’s bid pledges to keep the underlying browser code called Chromium open source, invest $3 billion over two years and make no modifications to Chrome’s default search engine, according to a time period sheet seen by GWN.
The company said the offer, with no equity part, would protect consumer alternative and ease future competitors issues.
Analysts have said Google could be unlikely to promote Chrome and would seemingly have interaction in a long legal battle to forestall that end result, given it’s essential to the company’s AI push as it rolls out options including AI-generated search summaries, recognized as Overviews, to help defend its search market share.
Perplexity’s bid pledges to keep the underlying browser code called Chromium open source, invest $3 billion over two years and make no modifications to Chrome’s default search engine, according to a time period sheet seen by GWN. REUTERS
A federal decide is predicted to issue a ruling on remedies in the Google search antitrust case someday this month.
Perplexity’s bid is also below the at least $50 billion worth that rival search engine DuckDuckGo’s CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, advised Chrome might command if Google was pressured to promote it.
Besides OpenAI and Perplexity, Yahoo and private-equity firm Apollo Global Management have also expressed curiosity in Chrome.
Two subsidiaries of News Corp, mother or father of The Post, have sued Perplexity.
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