Aravind Srinivas-led Perplexity makes an offer to purchase Chrome

Aravind Srinivas-led AI startup Perplexity has formally made a bid to purchase Chrome browser from Google for a whopping $34.5 billion.

A Perplexity spokesperson confirmed this to Fortune India. This acquisition bid is the San Francisco-based startup’s effort to become a forerunner in web browsers.

“For us this is an important commitment to the open web, user choice, and continuity for everyone who has chosen Chrome.  The forma offer letter to Google contains several important elements,” the spokesperson told Fortune India.

For now, the commitment entails to continue ‘ongoing and substantial investment in Chromium’ worth $3 billion over the next two years, following the acquisition. Perplexity has also promised to never change user defaults without giving users the choice, to never ‘stealthily replace’ Google as the default search engine of Chrome. Additionally, the company will extend offers to a ‘substantial’ portion of Chrome talent, the spokesperson told Fortune India. The company has also committed to ‘100 months of availability and support for Chrome users.’

Why Google Chrome?

Last August, U.S. federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in internet search. The U.S. Department of Justice had then proposed remedies including forcing Google to sell the Chrome browser and license its search data to competitors. Having previously called Google a “monopolist,” judge Mehta is expected to issue his decision on these proposed measures in the coming days, and hence the active interest and offers from AI startups.

The acquisition entails that of Chrome, the web browser application that comes pre-installed across smartphone and tablet devices including Samsung, Motorola, and Nothing among others, alongside the open-source Chromium software, using which people actually access the web on PCs.

Why are web browsers so much in news these days?

As reported by Fortune India earlier, the AI web browsers have become the new ‘IT’ thing of the town as web search gets transformed with AI engines. OpenAI had also shown interest in acquiring the legal problem-ridden Chrome earlier this year. This is also because Chrome has seen slightly flattish growth in its Chrome growth over the last few months, as AI browsers gain ground.

Yet, a major problem remains for financing the whopping order value for Perplexity, that has only recently been upvalued at $18 billion. Yet, it might be possible that the startup investors may finance the transaction subsequently in tranches.

The company had recently launched Comet and had raked early praise for the multiple use cases of the AI web browser. While the recent offer may not go through, given Chrome remains an integral cash cow for Google with the search engine access the browser powers across devices, this is a bold move by Perplexity to go head on head against Google.

This is not the first time Perplexity has shown interest in acquisition of a major tech service provider. Earlier this year, the startup had submitted bid to purchase TikTok.

So far, Alphabet has not issued any statement on the offer so made.