Perplexity AI Submits $34.5 Billion Bid to Acquire Google Chrome? Here Are The Updates

Liputan6.com, Jakarta Perplexity AI, a privately held American software company founded in August 2022, has recently been in the public spotlight.

The company, known for its artificial intelligence-based search engine, has made a surprising offer.

On August 12, 2025, Perplexity AI officially submitted an unsolicited $34.5 billion cash bid to acquire Alphabet Inc.'s popular web browser, Google Chrome according to The Wall Street Journal.

This acquisition bid aims to leverage Chrome's massive user base of over three billion users to strengthen Perplexity AI's position in the AI-based search competition.

AI startup Perplexity made a formal offer to acquire Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion, an audacious bid to get ahead of a potential requirement for the search giant to sell the web browser in US antitrust proceedings https://t.co/bUXwakUyp0 pic.twitter.com/wUsW3W4829

— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) August 12, 2025

Perplexity AI is a privately held American software company founded in August 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski.

The company focuses on developing innovative artificial intelligence (AI)-based search engines.

Perplexity AI's search engine uses large language models (LLMs) and real-time web search capabilities to provide accurate, reliable, and real-time answers.

As of July 2025, Perplexity AI's valuation reached US$18 billion, demonstrating significant growth since the launch of its main search engine on December 7, 2022.

In addition to its main search engine, Perplexity AI has also launched an extension for Google Chrome and apps for iOS and Android devices.

The company also has its own AI browser called Comet.

Perplexity AI's offer to acquire Google Chrome was submitted on August 12, 2025, for a cash consideration of $34.5 billion.

This figure is quite impressive, considering that Perplexity AI's own valuation in July 2025 was around $18 billion, or even $14 billion according to some sources.

A US court has ruled that Google unlawfully holds a monopoly in online search, and the US Department of Justice has suggested divesting Chrome as one solution to restore competition.

Perplexity AI's primary motivation for this offer is to gain access to Chrome's more than three billion users.

With such a large user base, Perplexity AI hopes to gain a significant advantage in the AI search market and compete more effectively with major players like OpenAI.

Despite the substantial amount of funding required, Perplexity AI stated that several unnamed investment funds have offered to fully finance the deal.

The company itself has raised approximately $1 billion in funding from prominent investors such as Nvidia and SoftBank.

If the acquisition goes through, Perplexity AI has made several important commitments.

They have pledged to keep the open source code of Chromium, the foundation of the Chrome browser, open.

Furthermore, Perplexity AI has committed to investing $3 billion over the next two years in Chrome and Chromium development.

Perplexity AI has also confirmed that it will not make any changes to Chrome's default search engine, which is currently Google.

They also plan to offer positions to most of the talent currently working on the Chrome team, and provide 100 months of full availability and support for Chrome users.

However, to date, Google has not officially responded to Perplexity AI's offer.

Google has also not offered Chrome for sale and plans to appeal a US court ruling declaring it an illegal monopoly in online search.

Market analysts believe that Google is unlikely to sell Chrome, given its critical importance to its AI strategy and search market dominance.