Perplexity AI made on Tuesday (12) an unquenified offer of $ 34.5 billion in cash by Alphabet’s Chrome browser, a value far above his own appraisal. The startup seeks the billions of navigator users, essential in the race for AI searches.
Perplexity is not strange to flashy offers. The company made a similar offer for the US Tiktok division in January, offering a merger with the popular video of short videos to resolve US government concerns about the platform’s Chinese property.
OpenAi, Yahoo and Private Capital Company Apollo Global Management have also expressed interest in Chrome, as regulatory pressure threatens Google’s control over the sector.
Google did not immediately respond to Reuters’ comment requests.
The company did not put Chrome for sale and plans to appeal a decision of a US court last year that it considered that it had an illegal monopoly on internet searches. The Justice Department requested the alienation of Chrome as part of the case solution.
Perplexity has not revealed how it plans to finance the offer. The three -year -old company has raised about $ 1 billion in investor financing so far, including Nvidia and Softbank. It was last valued at $ 14 billion.
According to Perplexity, several funds offered to finance the business in its entirety, but the company did not mention what they would be. Alphabet’s shares rose 1.6% in negotiations in the afternoon.
As a new generation of users use chatbots, such as chatgPT and perplexity, for answers, browsers are recovering prominence as doors for traffic from search and valuable user data, making them central to Big Tech AI ambitions.
Perplexity already has an AI browser, Comet, which can perform certain tasks on behalf of the user.
Chrome’s purchase would allow you to enjoy more than three billion navigator users, which would give it the weight needed to compete better with larger rivals, such as OpenAi. ChatgPT’s controlling company is also working on its own AI browser.
Perplexity offer promises to keep Chromium open, which is based on the browser source code, investing $ 3 billion in two years and not making changes in Chrome’s standard search engine, according to a commitment term seen by Reuters.
The company said the offer, without a shareholder component, would preserve the user’s choice and alleviate concerns about the competition in the future.
Analysts said it was unlikely that Google sells Chrome and that the company would probably get involved in a long legal battle to avoid this result, as the browser is crucial to the company’s AI efforts.
They include the research summaries generated by IA known as overview to help defend their participation in the search market.
Federal Judge Amit Mehta is expected to decide on the antitrust case later this month.
“Judge Mehta is quite orthodox. It is quite possible that he dises the demand for a sale until the appeal process is resolved, which can take a long time,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, professor at Carey Law School at the University of Pennsylvania.
“The process would go to the DC circuit, which is skeptical in relation to forced alienations, and it is possible that even to the Supreme Court after that. Therefore, this process could extend for a few years.”
Perplexity offer is also below at least $ 50 billion by which Chrome could be sold, according to Rival Search CEO DuckDuckgo, Gabriel Weinberg, if Google is forced to sell it.
