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In a bold and somewhat unexpected move, AI startup Perplexity AI has announced an unsolicited $34.5 billion all-cash offer to acquire Google Chrome.
The bid, which comes from the three-year-old firm backed by prominent investors including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is widely seen as a strategic play to challenge tech giants in the escalating AI race.
The timing of the bid is particularly noteworthy, as it coincides with a looming US court ruling that could force Google to break up its search business due to antitrust violations. This regulatory pressure provides a unique window of opportunity for a competitor such as Perplexity, which seeks to gain access to Chrome’s estimated three billion users to accelerate its own AI ambitions.
In a letter to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Perplexity stated the acquisition would benefit the public by moving Chrome to an independent operator committed to user safety and the “open web.”
However, the bid has been met with heavy scepticism from industry experts. Several technology investors have dismissed the offer as a “stunt,” pointing out that it is a fraction of Chrome’s true value and that the browser is not officially for sale.
One analyst estimated that Chrome’s value could be as much as ten times higher than the bid. Perplexity has not yet disclosed how it plans to fund the acquisition, despite being valued at an estimated $18 billion in July.
The move underscores the growing importance of web browsers as critical gateways to search traffic and valuable user data in the age of generative AI. While the bid’s success is highly uncertain, it has successfully put a spotlight on Perplexity and intensified the scrutiny of Google’s long-held dominance in the market.
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