This is the second major offer the AI startup has made this year to buy a major asset. In January, it offered to buy TikTok.
Perplexity AI said it has made a $34.5bn unsolicited all-cash offer for Alphabet’s Google Chrome browser.
The deal, if Alphabet agreed to it, would also require financing above the startup’s most recently reported valuation of $18bn.
The nearly three-year-old startup’s purchase of Chrome, if approved, would give the company access to its more than three billion users as regulatory pressure weighs on Google’s control over the tech industry.
Perplexity did not disclose on Tuesday how it plans to fund the offer, but has raised $1bn in funding from investors including SoftBank and the semiconductor chip giant Nvidia.
Several funds have said they would finance the deal in full if Alphabet accepts, the Reuters news agency reported citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
Alphabet has not offered to sell Chrome and has planned to appeal a United States court ruling that said Google held an unlawful monopoly over the online search marketplace. The US Department of Justice has said that divestiture of Chrome would help remedy that case. A federal judge is expected to rule on remedies for the case later this month.
Web browsers as vital gateways
As a new generation of users turns to chatbots such as ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers, web browsers are regaining prominence as vital gateways to search traffic and prized user data, making them central to Big Tech’s AI ambitions.
Perplexity already has an AI browser, Comet, that can perform certain tasks on a user’s behalf. Buying Chrome would allow it to tap the browser’s more than three billion users, giving it the heft to better compete with bigger rivals such as OpenAI. The ChatGPT parent is also working on its own AI browser.
Perplexity, run by CEO Aravind Srinivas, has said it will keep the browser’s code open source and make no changes to the default search engine, according to Reuters.
The San Francisco-based startup is far from the only company to express interest in Google Chrome. ChatGPT owner OpenAI has also expressed interest, as has Yahoo and New York-based private equity firm Apollo Global Management.
It is not the first eye-catching bid from the AI startup this year. In January, Perplexity AI offered to buy TikTok after regulators called for the Chinese-owned app to be sold to a US company. The White House has delayed the ban several times. The most recent delay was announced in late June.
Neither Google nor Perplexity immediately responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
On Wall Street, Alphabet’s share price surged up 1.4 percent since the market opened. Potential funder Nvidia is relatively flat, only up about 0.1 percent. However, SoftBank is surging up more than 6.9 percent as of 1pm in New York (17:00 GMT). Perplexity is not a publicly traded company.