Perplexity, the AI startup responsible for the eponymous chatbot and LLM-powered search engine, has made a formal bid to purchase Google's Chrome browser.
The proposed $34.5 billion deal would eclipse Perplexity's current valuation. In July, the company was valued at $18 billion -- just over half the amount of the proposed bid. The company has said that several interested investors are willing to back the Chrome deal.
Perplexity's bid comes after Google lost an antitrust suit initiated by the US Department of Justice last year.
The judge in the case ruled that Google maintains an illegal monopoly in the internet search industry, and one potential remedy under consideration would be for Google to divest itself of the Chrome browser. The Department of Justice's filing maintained that this would create a more equal playing field for search engine competitors.
Google has not detailed any plans to divest itself of Chrome or change its business model. The company's response said the ruling was emblematic of a "radical interventionist agenda" and vowed to fight the decision.
The judge's ruling on a remedy is expected this month.
Representatives for Google and Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Perplexity has itself been eyed by large tech companies with an interest in the startup. Meta approached Perplexity for an acquisition earlier this year but a deal never materialized.
If the plucky startup were to acquire the Chrome browser, it would give it a enormous advantage in the AI arms race -- where it's competing with much bigger fish, like Google, Meta and OpenAI. While Perplexity doesn't have comparable amounts of capital to expend on signing engineers, owning the largest search engine in the world will help build the company's signature agentic search engine AI models.
Perplexity's latest development is Comet, an AI-powered search engine of the company's own making that launched last month.