The Perplexity app within the Apple App Retailer on a smartphone organized in Washington, DC, US, on Sunday, June 1, 2025.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs
Synthetic intelligence startup Perplexity AI has made an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Google’s Chrome browser, CNBC confirmed on Tuesday.
That determine is increased than Perplexity’s present valuation, however the firm stated a number of traders have agreed to again the deal. In July, Perplexity was valued at $18 billion as a part of an extension that valued the corporate at $14 billion months earlier.
Google didn’t instantly reply to CNBC’s request for remark. The Wall Avenue Journal was first to report the bid.
Perplexity is greatest identified for its AI-powered search engine that offers customers easy solutions to questions and hyperlinks out to the unique supply materials on the net. Final month, it launched its personal AI-powered browser referred to as Comet.
The startup is in the midst of a battle for supremacy in generative AI, with firms together with Meta and OpenAI providing huge salaries and signing bonuses to high engineers. Megacap tech firms are spending tens of billions of {dollars} a yr on AI infrastructure to construct massive language fashions and run hefty workloads, whereas startups are elevating billions of {dollars} from enterprise traders, hedge funds and tech giants to pay for the {hardware} and headcount wanted to compete.
Perplexity was approached by Meta earlier this yr a few potential acquisition, however the firms didn’t finalize a deal.
Perplexity’s bid comes after the U.S. Division of Justice proposed Google divest Chrome as a part of the antitrust swimsuit the corporate misplaced final yr. The choose within the case dominated that Google has held an unlawful monopoly in its core market of web search.
In response, Google stated that the DOJ was pushing “a radical interventionist agenda,” and that the company’s proposal was “wildly overbroad.” The corporate has not but disclosed the way it plans to regulate its enterprise following the antitrust ruling.
Chrome, which Google launched in 2008, offers the search large with information it then makes use of for focusing on advertisements. The DOJ stated in a submitting following the courtroom’s choice that forcing the corporate to do away with Chrome would create a extra equal enjoying subject for search opponents.
“To treatment these harms, the [Initial Proposed Final Judgment] requires Google to divest Chrome, which can completely cease Google’s management of this crucial search entry level and permit rival search engines like google and yahoo the power to entry the browser that for a lot of customers is a gateway to the web,” the DOJ wrote.
Perplexity’s bid for Chrome isn’t the primary time it is taken an enormous swing.
The startup submitted a proposal to merge with the short-form video app TikTok in January. TikTok’s future within the U.S. has been unsure since 2024, when Congress handed a invoice that may ban the platform except its Chinese language proprietor, ByteDance, divested from it.
As of August, Perplexity’s proposed construction for a TikTok deal has not materialized.