Key Highlights :
Perplexity has offered $34.5 billion in cash to acquire Google Chrome, despite its valuation of only $18 billion.
The proposal includes keeping Chrome open-source, retaining existing search defaults, and investing $3 billion over two years in development.
Key Background :
1. Perplexity’s Rapid Rise
Established in 2022, Perplexity soon gained fame for its conversational search engine powered by AI that provides live, cited responses. Funded by large venture capital investments, the firm had a valuation of $18 billion in 2025. With Aravind Srinivas at the helm, it has emerged as a competitor to conventional search engines.
2. Chrome’s Market Power
Google Chrome dominates more than three billion active users worldwide, the most widely used browser in the world. With its status as the main doorway to the internet, Google has tremendous power over internet traffic through searches, ad revenue, and data gathering.
3. Regulatory Pressure on Google
Google now faces aggressive antitrust enforcement in the United States. A federal judge held that it has an illegal monopoly in search, leading the Department of Justice to consider structural remedies in including potentially mandating the sale of Chrome.
4. Terms of Perplexity’s Proposal
The offer commits to leaving Chrome’s Chromium codebase open-source, leaving Google as the default search engine, and investing $3 billion over two years in improvements. These conditions are designed to reduce disruption to users and win over anti-competitive regulators.
5. Funding and Strategy
While Perplexity has not yet named its funding partners, it assures investor support is already in place to fund the buyout. The sheer magnitude of the bid almost twice that of the company’s own valuation is attracting attention from throughout the tech world.
6. Strategic Implications
Even if the offer is spurned, Perplexity’s action is regarded as a masterstroke of brand positioning. It puts the startup in global news, positions it at the forefront of AI-powered browsing, and warns that the war for dominance over the “gateway to the internet” is heating up.
About the Author
Abhishek Roy
Abhishek Roy is a Managing Editor at Business Minds Media India.