Perplexity wants to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion, twice the company’s value

Perplexity, an AI startup, is putting together a bid to buy Google Chrome. There are just two potential problems. First, Chrome isn’t actually for sale. Second, the bid is worth twice as much as Perplexity.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, Perplexity is making an “all-cash offer” to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion.

Perplexity hasn’t been quiet on this topic, with the company previously saying in court that it “thinks” it could run Chromium at the same scale as Google without lessening quality or charging for the work. As Reuters notes, Perplexity’s bid apparently pledges to keep Chromium open source, make no changes to its default search engine, and “invest $3 billion over two years” to the project.

As it stands today, Google Chrome isn’t for sale. That may change as Google’s antitrust trial comes to a close, with a judge expected to decide on remedies – which may include a forced sale of Chrome – “sometime this month.”

The other big question with this bid comes by way of financing. $34.5 billion is well below prior estimates of what Chrome could be worth, but it’s also nearly twice what Perplexity as a company itself is worth. So where is all that extra money coming from? It’s said that “multiple funds” may be willing to finance the deal in full.

It remains to be seen how this will all play out, but Perplexity isn’t the only name here, as OpenAI and Yahoo both previously expressed interest. Notably, too, this comes barely a month after Perplexity launched its own “Comet” web browser.

This isn’t the first time Perplexity has made an attention-grabbing offer to buy a big tech product, as the company previously tried to position itself to buy TikTok.

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• Chrome New Tab Page adding AI Mode shortcut
• Gemini (Live) coming to Google Chrome for Mac and Windows 

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