Although Perplexity is an AI startup that has made decent progress in the technology space, it"s often in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. In April, the company revealed its intentions to collect data on everything its customers do to present them hyper personalized ads, and in July, it launched its Comet AI browser locked behind a $200/month subscription. Now, the company has offered to buy Chrome for $34.5 billion.
You read that right. Perplexity, which is valued at roughly $18 billion, has offered to buy Google Chrome for almost double its own valuation. Let that sink in. Of course, market valuation doesn"t equate to money in the bank, which makes the offer even more ludicrous considering that Perplexity probably doesn"t even have that number on the bottomline of its financial reports.
Perplexity"s chief business officer, Dmitry Shevelenko, confirmed to Bloomberg that Perplexity"s unsolicited bid is indeed real and that it would invest a further $3 billion in Chrome and Chromium over the next two years if Google accepts its bid. The executive also emphasized that "multiple large investment funds" have agreed to finance the transaction fully, indicating that the company"s bid is legitimate, even if it does not possess the funds itself yet.
All of this is, of course, a PR move, but it"s unclear what the end goal is. Google has not offered to sell Chrome to anyone and it"s unlikely that the most popular browser in the world is worth a paltry $34.5 billion anyway. Even if Google was to consider selling off Chrome, it"s unlikely that it would sell it to a competitor.
The topic of selling Chrome has been going on since the last year when the Department of Justice (DoJ) ruled that Google has a monopoly on search, and recommended it to sell off its browser to level the playing field. However, Chrome"s general manager argued against this viewpoint, highlighting Chrome"s interdependencies on Google"s ecosystem, making it impossible for any other company to operate it. Although Google has not been forced to sell off Chrome just yet, it seems like there are many potential buyers who are lining up, with even OpenAI expressing the same intention.