Perplexity’s $34.5 Billion Shot at Google Chrome: How One Bid Collides with Big Tech Antitrust

As antitrust pressure mounts on Google, AI challenger Perplexity—backed by Nvidia and eyeing competition with Microsoft—makes an audacious bid to seize control of the world’s most popular browser.

Author Credentials:

KBS Sidhu, IAS (Retd.), former Special Chief Secretary, Punjab, and gold medallist in Electronics and Communication Engineering, writes on the unfolding saga of a young David challenging the behemoth Goliath to wrest control of the browser gateway and search engine on which the world surfs.

Perplexity’s $34.5 Billion Unsolicited Shot at Google Chrome

A Bid Designed to Shock

On Tuesday, 12 August 2025, AI search upstart Perplexity AI lobbed a grenade into Silicon Valley’s front garden: an unsolicited, all-cash offer of $34.5 billion to buy Google’s Chrome browser. Coming from a three-year-old company that has raised only a fraction of that sum, the bid is as audacious as it is improbable—and perfectly timed to exploit Google’s antitrust headwinds in the United States. Regulators have openly floated forcing Google to divest Chrome after a landmark ruling that found the company illegally maintained a monopoly in online search.

Why Chrome Matters

Chrome is the world’s most widely used browser, with roughly two-thirds of global market share and an estimated user base exceeding 3 billion. For Google, it is not merely a browser; it is a strategic gateway that helps steer traffic to Search and feeds a broader, $100-billion-plus advertising engine with behavioural signals about how people browse and query the web. That distribution power—default settings, user telemetry, and the tight coupling between browser and search—sits at the heart of the U.S. government’s proposed remedies.

The Offer on Paper

Perplexity’s term sheet leans into regulatory anxieties. It pledges to keep Chrome’s open-source bedrock (the Chromium project) truly open, to invest $3 billion over two years into engineering and infrastructure, and—strikingly—not to change Chrome’s default search engine, preserving Google Search as the out-of-the-box choice. The company also says there’s no equity component, a nod to antitrust optics. Perplexity claims that multiple outside funds are prepared to finance the deal in full, though it hasn’t named them.

Meet the India-Born CEO Driving the Bid

Perplexity’s co-founder and chief executive is Aravind Srinivas, an India-born computer scientist who studied at IIT Madras and later pursued doctoral work at UC Berkeley. Raised in Chennai, Srinivas has cast Perplexity as a new kind of “answer engine,” staking its future on fast, citation-rich responses rather than traditional lists of links. His personal trajectory—from India to the Bay Area, from research to a headline-grabbing M&A gambit—mirrors the global pipeline of technical talent shaping the AI era.

Perplexity’s Rapid Rise—and Its Constraints

Perplexity’s growth has been unusually fast by any standard. Reports this summer pegged the company’s private valuation around $18 billion, reflecting investor enthusiasm for AI-native search. Yet even at that mark, the Chrome bid is nearly twice Perplexity’s latest paper value, underscoring how dependent the offer is on external financing. The company has also begun expanding beyond a single product: last month it launched Comet, its own AI-infused browser for premium users—an early signal of its ambitions to compete on the browsing layer, not just search.

The Legal Backdrop: How Chrome Entered the Crosshairs

In August 2024, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google unlawfully maintained monopolies in online search and search advertising, chiefly by paying vast sums to remain the default search provider across browsers and smartphones. That liability verdict triggered a remedies phase in 2025 to determine how to unwind Google’s advantage. Among the Department of Justice’s proposals: force Google to divest Chrome to weaken the pipeline of defaults and data that reinforce its search dominance. Google argues such remedies overshoot the conduct found unlawful and would harm consumers and innovation; the company is expected to appeal any breakup order.

Why This Bid, and Why Now

Perplexity’s move is as much political economy as it is product strategy. If the court embraces a Chrome divestiture, an acquirer with a credible plan could become the browser’s new steward. By pre-committing to keep Chromium open, to invest heavily, and to retain Google as the default search (at least initially), Perplexity pitches itself as a “least-disruptive” buyer—one that lowers the court’s switching costs while promising competitive dynamism over time. It’s also a way to plant a flag: should the judge endorse divestiture, Perplexity wants to be at the front of the queue.

What Makes Chrome So Strategic

Browsers are distribution kingmakers. Control of the default search box on the “new tab” page and the omnibox is priceless; it is where countless commercial journeys begin. Chrome’s alignment with Google Search concentrates those journeys, supporting the ad business and the AI roadmap that now runs through Search’s generative features. Severing that alignment—even if Google remained the default via contract—would transfer bargaining power to a new owner and crack open the browser layer to AI-first competition. That is precisely why the DOJ sees divestiture as a remedy with teeth.

Industry Scepticism (and a Reality Check)

While the bid grabbed headlines, market analysts doubt it will pry Chrome away from Google. The company has shown no appetite to sell, and appellate litigation could drag on for years even if a breakup were ordered. For now, the safer base case on Wall Street is that Google fights and delays, while rivals jockey for position and mindshare in case the court surprises. In that sense, Perplexity’s offer functions as both a takeover proposal and a very loud marketing message about where the browser market is headed.

Perplexity’s Browser Gambit

By launching Comet, Perplexity signalled it wants to compete on the surface where people actually live online: the browser. An ownership stake in Chrome would turbocharge that plan with instant, global distribution. Short of a sale, though, Perplexity can still use Comet to showcase what an AI-native browser might feel like—an assistant riding alongside you on every page, capable of research, shopping, summarising and drafting without forcing you to jump between tabs and tools.

The Risks Beneath the Hype

Even if the court blesses divestiture, buying Chrome would transform Perplexity overnight from a nimble AI startup into the custodian of a complex, global consumer platform with security, privacy, and compatibility obligations at internet scale. Funding the deal is only the first hurdle; maintaining user trust while evolving Chrome’s feature set is the marathon. And there is a delicate strategic balance to strike: Perplexity says it would keep Google as the default search engine, but over time its commercial incentives will point toward deeper integration of its own answer engine. Regulators—scarred by the last decade of defaults—will be watching.

What a Sale Could Mean for Users and the Web

A change in Chrome’s ownership could re-set the browser race. A new steward might experiment with opt-in AI helpers, more transparent data practices, or novel monetisation that is less reliant on surveillance advertising. Developers could gain from renewed investment in performance and web standards. But fragmentation risks are real: if a buyer chased proprietary advantage by forking Chromium in practice if not in name, the open-web equilibrium could wobble. Perplexity’s promises about open source and investment are meant to calm exactly those fears.

The Competitive Chessboard

Google is far from alone in viewing the browser as the on-ramp to the AI future. Apple, Microsoft, and a crop of AI-first challengers are all weaving assistants into browsing experiences. That intensifying competition is part of what made the remedies trial so forward-looking: judges, economists and technologists are debating not just today’s search contracts, but tomorrow’s AI distribution. If Chrome ever does change hands, it would be the most consequential browser transaction since Netscape’s heyday.

The Bottom Line

Perplexity’s $34.5 billion gambit is a moonshot designed for a very specific legal moment. It spotlights how central browsers remain in a world tilting toward AI—and how antitrust remedies can redraw the map of tech power if courts are willing to swing hard. Whether or not Google ever sells Chrome, the message is unmistakable: the next search war will be fought not just in answer boxes, but in the very software we use to touch the web. And at the centre of this drama stands Aravind Srinivas, the India-born CEO betting that the right mix of timing, regulation and product vision can turn a bold offer into a changing of the guard.

Click to watch the TED AI podcast featuring Perplexity’s CEO, hosted by our Honorary Tech Advisor, Bilawal Sidhu—based in Austin, Texas—as they explore the future of AI and search innovation.