Perplexity AI stated the supply, with no fairness part, would protect person alternative and ease future competitors considerations. File | Photo Credit: Reuters
Run by Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity is not any stranger to headline-grabbing provides – it made an identical one for TikTok U.S. in January, providing to merge with the favored short-video app to resolve U.S. considerations about TikTok’s Chinese possession.
Buying Chrome would enable the startup to faucet the browser’s greater than three billion customers for an edge within the AI search race as regulatory stress threatens Google’s grip on the business.
Google didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark. The firm has not supplied Chrome on the market and plans to enchantment a U.S. courtroom ruling final yr that discovered it held an illegal monopoly in on-line search. The Justice Department has sought a Chrome divestiture as a part of the case’s cures.
Perplexity didn’t disclose on Tuesday (August 12, 2025) the way it plans to fund the supply. The three-year-old firm has raised round $1 billion in funding so removed from buyers together with Nvidia and Japan’s SoftBank. It was final valued at $14 billion.
Multiple funds have supplied to finance the deal in full, an individual conversant in the matter stated, with out naming the funds.
As a brand new era of customers turns to chatbots equivalent to ChatGPT and Perplexity for solutions, internet browsers are regaining prominence as important gateways to look visitors and prized person knowledge, making them central to Big Tech’s AI ambitions.
Perplexity already has an AI browser, Comet, that may carry out sure duties on a person’s behalf and buying Chrome would give it the heft to higher compete in opposition to greater rivals equivalent to OpenAI. The ChatGPT mother or father has additionally expressed curiosity in shopping for Chrome and is working by itself AI browser.
Perplexity’s bid pledges to maintain the underlying browser code known as Chromium open supply, make investments $3 billion over two years and make no modifications to Chrome’s default search engine, in response to a time period sheet seen by Reuters.
The firm stated the supply, with no fairness part, would protect person alternative and ease future competitors considerations.
Analysts have stated Google could be unlikely to promote Chrome and would probably have interaction in an extended authorized combat to forestall that final result, given it’s essential to the corporate’s AI push because it rolls out options together with AI-generated search summaries, generally known as Overviews, to assist defend its search market share.
A federal choose is predicted to concern a ruling on cures within the Google search antitrust case someday this month.
Perplexity’s bid can also be under the at the least $50 billion worth that rival search engine DuckDuckGo’s CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, advised Chrome could command if Google was pressured to promote it.
Besides OpenAI and Perplexity, Yahoo and private-equity agency Apollo Global Management have additionally expressed curiosity in Chrome.
Published – August 12, 2025 10:17 pm IST
