In an unlikely offer that demonstrates the growing brazenness of artificial intelligence companies, the Perplexity startup has made an offer to buy Google’s Chrome browser for 34.5 billion dollars.
The reasons for the offer
The passage of Chrome to an independent operator engaged in the safety of users would go to the benefit of the public, said Perplexity in a letter to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, owner of Google.
Perplexity’s offer also fits into a procedure that could force Google to sell its browser for antitrust reasons. An American federal judge should issue a sentence this month that he could order Google to dismantle his research activity. The company has declared that it will appeal against this sentence, stating that the idea of sliding Chrome was an unprecedented “proposal” that would damage consumers and safety.
The reassurances
As part of the acquisition proposal, Perplexity said that it would continue to use Google as a predefined search engine inside Chrome, although users could change their settings.
The company stated that she would also maintain and support Chromium, a widely used open source platform that supports chrome and other browsers, including Microsoft Edge and Opera.
The knot of evaluation
Perplexity’s offer is significantly higher than its own evaluation, estimated at 18 billion dollars. The company told the Wall Street Journal that several investors, including large Funds of Venture Capital, have agreed to fully support the operation.
The company, which is three years old, has so far collected about $ 1 billion in funding from investors such as Nvidia and the Japanese Softbank. The last evaluation, Reuters writes, was 14 billion dollars.
The strengthening of the location
Perplexity already has an artificial intelligence browser, comet, able to perform certain operations on behalf of the user and the purchase of Chrome would allow it to exploit the over three billion users of the browser, giving it the weight necessary to compete better with larger rivals such as Openii. The Mother Chatgpt company is also working on its own browser for artificial intelligence.
