Perplexity AI stated it has made a $34.5 billion unsolicited all-cash supply for Alphabet’s Chrome browser, a low however daring bid that would want financing properly above the startup’s personal valuation.
Run by Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity isn’t any stranger to headline-grabbing provides – it made the same one for TikTok U.S. in January, providing to merge with the favored short-video app to resolve U.S. considerations about TikTok’s Chinese possession.
Buying Chrome would permit the startup to faucet the browser’s greater than three billion customers for an edge within the AI search race as regulatory stress threatens Google’s grip on the trade.
Google didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark. The firm has not provided Chrome for sale and plans to attraction a U.S. courtroom ruling final yr that discovered it held an illegal monopoly in on-line search. The Justice Department has sought a Chrome divestiture as a part of the case’s treatments.
Perplexity didn’t disclose on Tuesday (August 12, 2025) the way it plans to fund the supply. The three-year-old firm has raised round $1 billion in funding so removed from buyers together with Nvidia and Japan’s SoftBank. It was final valued at $14 billion.
Multiple funds have provided to finance the deal in full, an individual conversant in the matter stated, with out naming the funds.
As a brand new technology of customers turns to chatbots comparable to ChatGPT and Perplexity for solutions, net browsers are regaining prominence as very important gateways to go looking visitors and prized person information, making them central to Big Tech’s AI ambitions.
Perplexity already has an AI browser, Comet, that may carry out sure duties on a person’s behalf and buying Chrome would give it the heft to raised compete in opposition to larger rivals comparable to OpenAI. The ChatGPT dad or mum has additionally expressed curiosity in shopping for Chrome and is working by itself AI browser.
Perplexity’s bid pledges to maintain the underlying browser code known as Chromium open supply, make investments $3 billion over two years and make no adjustments to Chrome’s default search engine, in accordance with a time period sheet seen by Reuters.
The firm stated the supply, with no fairness element, would protect person selection and ease future competitors considerations.
Analysts have stated Google can be unlikely to promote Chrome and would possible have interaction in an extended authorized struggle to stop that end result, given it’s essential to the corporate’s AI push because it rolls out options together with AI-generated search summaries, often known as Overviews, to assist defend its search market share.
A federal decide is anticipated to difficulty a ruling on treatments within the Google search antitrust case someday this month.
Perplexity’s bid can also be beneath the no less than $50 billion worth that rival search engine DuckDuckGo’s CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, advised Chrome could command if Google was pressured to promote it.
Besides OpenAI and Perplexity, Yahoo and private-equity agency Apollo Global Management have additionally expressed curiosity in Chrome.
