Perplexity AI makes audacious $34.5B all-cash bid for Google’s Chrome browser

Generative artificial intelligence search startup Perplexity AI Inc. today offered a bid to purchase Google LLC’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion in an unsolicited all-cash offer.

The Wall Street Journal reported that although Perplexity’s offer exceeds the company’s valuation, estimated at $18 billion after its latest funding round, the company said several investors, including “large venture-capital funds,” have agreed to back the transaction in full.

The three-year-old company has raised around $1 billion in funding so far from investors, including Nvidia Corp. and Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp.

The company is best known for its flagship search product, which provides rich answers from web searches in paragraph form, including citations, and allows users to input conversation-style English questions.

Perplexity also recently introduced its own web browser, named Comet, based on Chromium, the open-source software engine that underpins Chrome. Comet extends Chromium with Perplexity’s AI-powered features, including web search set as the default, and a sidebar that provides access to an AI assistant that can automate a variety of browser actions.

The bid offer comes at a time when Google is facing antitrust action from the United States government over its stranglehold on web search. Last year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in the search text advertising markets.

During the remedy phase, the portion of the trial where the government decides how the monopoly can be settled to restore competition, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta has been deciding whether or not to force Google to sell Chrome. In testimony this year, Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said that selling Chrome to rivals would harm the company’s business.

Buying Chrome would provide the startup access to Chrome’s more than 3 billion users, a significant jump in cornering the AI search market.

The company stated that if it wins the bid, it will maintain the browser as open source and will not alter its underlying code. Additionally, it will not change its default search engine and invest $3 billion over two years, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters.

This is assuming that Google is willing to part with Chrome, which seems unlikely, and appears intent to engage in a lengthy legal battle to maintain its grip on the product instead.

According to industry estimates, Perplexity’s bid may also be below the potential enterprise market rate for Chrome, which was estimated at around $50 billion in value by rival search engine Duck Duck Go Inc. CEO Gabriel Weinberg.

“Perplexity AI’s $34.5 billion bid for Chrome is more than a bold acquisition attempt, it’s a signal that control over the browser is becoming one of the most valuable frontiers in the AI era,” said Alon Yamin, co-founder and CEO of Copyleaks Technologies Ltd. “Whoever owns the gateway to the web holds immense influence over how information is accessed, prioritized and trusted.”

Perplexity is not the only enterprise outfit to put eyes on Chrome. Sam Altman’s OpenAI also spoke during the trial that it might be interested in purchasing the software from Google. Yahoo Inc. and private-equity firm Apollo Global Management have also shown interest in the web browser.

Image: Perplexity