Perplexity AI Wants To Write A $34.5 Billion Check For Google's Chrome

Seemingly out of nowhere, Perplexity AI posted a $34.5 billion bid to buy out Google's Chrome browser. Additionally, the offer was made fully in cash, with no equity to be exchanged.

The offer comes as a surprise because as far as most anyone knew, Google wasn't offering Chrome for sale to begin with and $34.5 billion is more than Perplexity AI's current valuation. The search giant offered no comment on the prospective deal to a number of publications. However, there's some context that might explain why Perplexity's CEO Aravind Srinivas flashed the checkbook in such grand fashion.

Google is entrenched in U.S. anti-trust lawsuits, having lost one and been hit with a second. The most pressing judgement was by Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled that Google has a monopoly on internet search, and an outcome is expected any day now. In that case, the U.S. Justice Department has told Judge Mehta that said monopoly couldn't be remedied without structural changes to the company, and the selling of Chrome was previously floated as a solution. This could mean that Perplexity believes the search giant will be forced to divest itself of the browser, and wants to get its bid in early.

Speaking of the bid itself, it's worth noting that Perplexity has around an $18 billion market cap, a figure much inferior to the offer it made. If you're puzzled, two facts are worth considering. First, Perplexity counts Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA, a GitHub ex-CEO, and the Shopify CEO among its backers. Additionally, Perplexity straight up said that "multiple funds" have offered financing, though it offered no details on what that would entail.


The price might not be right, though. The BBC quotes one analyst as saying that the price tag is pretty low for Chrome's worth, with another stating that the browser is worth a good 10 times the proposed amount. In the same vein, Reuters noted that DuckDuckGo CEO estimated Chrome's value at $50 billion.

An additional oddity is that Perplexity already has its own AI-infused Comet, leading one to think that it simply would want to replace Chrome's default Google search with its own answer engine. However, Perplexity stated that it wouldn't do so, and that it would commit to keeping the underlying Chromium engine open-source and invest $3 billion on Chrome over two years. All told, it seems the main reason for the purchase, for now, would be to gain a pathway to the 3.5 billion users and its 60% share of the browser market.