Taking advantage of the situation! Perplexity wants to acquire Google Chrome for $34.5 billion.

Text by | Zhou Xinyu

Edited by | Su Jianxun

A rare reverse acquisition of a big - company product by a startup has occurred in the AI search battlefield.

On August 12, 2025, according to "The Wall Street Journal", Perplexity, a top - tier startup in the US AI search field, is planning a full - cash acquisition of Google's Chrome browser, with an offer as high as $34.5 billion.

This acquisition seems a bit like taking advantage of someone's misfortune. The timing of this acquisition coincides with Google's precarious situation due to monopoly accusations.

In August 2024, Google was ruled by the US Department of Justice to have a monopoly in the search market and was required to sell Chrome.

What makes this acquisition astonishing is the huge disparity in the size of the two parties: one is a three - year - old AI startup, while the other is an Internet giant with a market value of over $2 trillion.

Currently, Perplexity is valued at $18 billion, but its offer to acquire Chrome is nearly twice its own valuation.

△ From left to right, the three co - founders of Perplexity, Johnny Ho, Aravind Srinivas, and Denis Yarats. Source: The Wall Street Journal

Behind this seemingly "crazy" acquisition offer lies the growth anxiety in the AI search field.

Since 2023, traditional search has been regarded as the first scenario to be impacted by AI. The approach of AI assistants directly integrating and summarizing answers has subverted the sorting model of traditional search engines. For users, AI search, which is not interfered with by bid - sorted advertisements, is more trustworthy.

Therefore, both model startups such as OpenAI, Kimi, and DeepSeek, and big companies such as Alibaba (Quark AI) and 360 (Nano AI) have laid out their plans for AI search. Nowadays, "deep search" has almost become a standard feature for everyone.

Founded in August 2022, Perplexity is the undisputed leader in the AI search field. In just three years, the valuation of this company has rapidly increased from $1.5 billion to $18 billion, more than ten times the original value.

The growth rate of its revenue is also enviable. According to Bloomberg, Perplexity's ARR soared from $5 million in January 2023 to $120 million in May 2025.

News from The Information also shows that in 2024, Perplexity's annual revenue reached $34 million.

However, the beautiful data is just on the surface. Perplexity's publicly disclosed financial data shows that in 2024, Perplexity's search processing volume was only 1/25 of OpenAI's and 1/900 of Google's.

This means that users still have a high degree of stickiness and path dependence on traditional browsers. Traditional browsers and content platforms remain important traffic entrances.

Among them, Chrome, with over 3 billion global users and a 68.32% global share, firmly holds the top position in the browser industry.

The lack of an original user base and a mature content ecosystem has always been a major drawback for AI search providers. Therefore, AI search companies often have to pay high fees for third - party search APIs.

For example, Perplexity's search answers are mainly based on the capabilities of third - party models such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Another AI search company, DuckDuckGo, uses the Bing Search API.

Financial data disclosed by Bloomberg shows that in 2024, Perplexity's expenditure on third - party models and cloud services reached as high as $57 million, far exceeding its revenue of $34 million.

△ Perplexity's financial data. Source: The Information

Moreover, traditional search providers such as Google are also building their own protective walls.

On the one hand, they are undergoing AI - based reconstruction. In May 2024, Google launched the AI Overview feature. The launch of this AI feature directly promoted the growth of Google's search business. According to the financial report, Google's search revenue in Q2 2025 reached $54.2 billion, a year - on - year increase of 12% and a record high.

△ Google's launched AI Overview feature. Source: Google's official website

On the other hand, they are stopping the external service of search APIs.

On August 11, Google removed the Bing Search API. This search API was once the core tool for many AI search products on the market to build their search experience. After its removal, all AI search products need to find alternative solutions.

The search war in the AI era has entered a white - hot stage.

To grab a share of the search market from traditional giants, AI upstarts are turning their eyes to browsers and content platforms, which are the main traffic entrances.

As early as January 2025, it was reported that Perplexity had planned to acquire TikTok's US business. Now, in addition to Perplexity, OpenAI is also participating in the battle to acquire Chrome.

In April 2025, during Google's anti - monopoly trial, Nick Turley, the head of OpenAI's products and ChatGPT, said that OpenAI and other parties would try to acquire Chrome.

To snatch Chrome, the "prize" from Google, Perplexity has gone all out.

First, it has raised the acquisition funds. According to Reuters, Perplexity said that several funds have offered to fully finance the acquisition.

Second, it has offered favorable terms. Perplexity promised that if the acquisition is successful, it will invest $3 billion in two years to maintain the open - source nature of Chromium, the underlying browser code of Chrome, and will not make any changes to Chrome's default search engine.

However, many industry insiders believe that the possibility of Perplexity acquiring Chrome is extremely low.

Reuters quoted analysts as saying that Google is almost impossible to sell Chrome and may even engage in a long - term legal battle for it. "Chrome is crucial for defending Google's search market share."

This will be a long - lasting war.

Appendix: Key events in Perplexity's development:

In August 2022, the company was co - founded by four engineers: Aravind Srinivas (CEO), Denis Yarats (CTO), Johnny Ho (CSO), and Andy Konwinski. The team members have technical backgrounds at companies such as OpenAI, Meta, Quora, and Databricks.

In September 2022, it completed a $3.1 million seed - round financing.

In December 2022, it launched its core product, the conversational AI search engine (Perplexity Ask).

In March 2023, it completed a $25.6 million Series A financing, and its valuation reached $150 million.

In August 2023, it launched "Perplexity 2.0".

In December 2023, it launched the Perplexity Pro paid subscription service.

In January 2024, it completed a $73.6 million Series B financing, and its valuation reached $520 million.

In April 2024, it completed a $62.7 million Series C financing, and its valuation exceeded $1 billion, making it a unicorn.

In June 2024, the Vision Fund under SoftBank invested in the company, pushing its valuation to $3 billion. At the same time, it faced copyright disputes.

In August 2024, it completed a $250 million Series C extension financing.

In November 2024, it first disclosed that it was developing its own AI browser named "Comet".

In December 2024, it completed a new round of $500 million financing, and its valuation reached $9 billion.

In January 2025, it was reported that it had made a merger offer to TikTok's US business. At the same time, Apple was internally discussing the possibility of acquiring Perplexity.

In July 2025, it completed a new round of $100 million financing, and its valuation reached $18 billion.

In August 2025, it sent an acquisition offer for Chrome to Google's parent company, Alphabet, with an offer price of $34.5 billion.

Welcome to communicate! j