In a move that has left Silicon Valley both amused and intrigued, AI start-up Perplexity AI has offered to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion a price tag many experts say is only a fraction of the browser’s true market value. The catch? It’s not even clear if Chrome is for sale.
Perplexity, led by a former Google and OpenAI executive and backed by heavyweights like Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, has quickly become a rising name in the AI space. The company, valued at around $18 billion, recently rolled out Comet, an AI-powered browser, in an apparent challenge to tech giants such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Google’s Gemini.
This isn’t Perplexity’s first headline-grabbing offer. Earlier this year, it bid for the U.S. operations of TikTok, which faces a looming September deadline to either sell to an American buyer or face a nationwide ban.
Industry insiders, however, are treating the Chrome proposal with skepticism. Some call it a “publicity stunt,” while others point out that the offer is far below what the browser used by over three billion people worldwide would realistically fetch. Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures suggested Chrome could be worth “ten times more” than Perplexity’s bid.
Judith MacKenzie, head of Downing Fund Managers, described the approach as “unsolicited” and “unfunded” but admitted admiration for the company’s audacity. Tech investor Heath Ahrens went further, suggesting that a tripled bid from someone like Sam Altman or Elon Musk could actually change the AI industry’s balance of power.
In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Perplexity argued that spinning Chrome off into an independent entity focused on user safety would serve the public interest. Google, facing two major U.S. antitrust lawsuits over its dominance in search and online ads, is unlikely to agree. The search giant has called such a move “unprecedented” and potentially harmful to both users and cybersecurity.
Perplexity itself is no stranger to controversy. The BBC recently accused the company of reproducing its content “verbatim” without permission a claim Perplexity denied, instead accusing the broadcaster of defending Google’s “illegal monopoly.”
Interestingly, as part of its offer, Perplexity promised to keep Google Search as Chrome’s default engine (with an option for users to change it) and pledged ongoing support for Chromium, the open-source platform powering Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Opera.
Whether this bold bid is a serious takeover attempt or just a clever PR move, one thing is certain: Perplexity has managed to get the tech world talking and that alone may have been the real objective.
