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Perplexity AI, led by Indian-origin CEO Aravind Srinivas, has made an unsolicited $34.5 billion (over Rs 3,02,152 crore) all-cash bid to acquire Google Chrome, as per foreign media reports. The offer is far above Perplexity’s own valuation and marks the latest bold move from the three-year-old AI startup.
The company, which has raised around $1 billion from investors including Nvidia and SoftBank, was last valued at $14 billion. It claims multiple funds have offered to finance the deal in full, though no names were disclosed.
The bid comes amid regulatory pressure on Google, with the US Justice Department seeking remedies to address what a court ruled was an unlawful monopoly in online search. One proposed measure includes forcing Google to divest Chrome. Google has said it plans to appeal and has not indicated any intention to sell the browser.
Perplexity’s proposal pledges to keep Chrome’s underlying Chromium code open-source, invest $3 billion over two years in the browser, and retain Chrome’s default search engine settings. The company says its plan would “preserve user choice” and reduce competition concerns.
Rivals eyeing Chrome’s massive user base
Rivals such as OpenAI, Yahoo, and Apollo Global Management have also shown interest in Chrome, while DuckDuckGo’s CEO has estimated its potential forced-sale value at no less than $50 billion.
Founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas along with Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, Perplexity has grown rapidly with its conversational AI search engine, which delivers cited answers in real time.
The company recently launched Comet, its own AI-powered browser, and says acquiring Chrome would allow it to access over three billion users worldwide — significantly boosting its ability to compete with OpenAI and others in the AI-driven search space.
From Chennai classrooms to Silicon Valley boardrooms
Srinivas, a Chennai-born IIT Madras graduate, previously worked at Google and interned under deep learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio before launching Perplexity in San Francisco. Under his leadership, the startup has expanded globally, including a partnership with Bharti Airtel in May 2025 that gave 360 million Indian users free access to Perplexity Pro.
Despite the high-profile bid, industry experts remain sceptical that Google would part with Chrome, which plays a central role in its AI strategy, including the rollout of AI-generated search summaries under the “Overviews” feature.
Not Srinivas’s first big gamble
Perplexity is no stranger to headline-grabbing offers – it made a similar one for TikTok US in January, offering to merge with the short-video app to address US concerns over Chinese ownership. The company believes Chrome’s vast user base could give it a decisive advantage in the AI search race.
While the startup hasn’t revealed exact financing details, it says multiple funds are ready to bankroll the deal. “Preserving user choice” remains central to its pitch, alongside easing antitrust concerns.
For Srinivas, making a play for a deal twice the size of his startup wasn’t something he had planned. His journey began far from Silicon Valley, in Chennai, where he says he grew up “just like any other student” — immersed in a culture that valued academic discipline. Early on, his love for numbers was fuelled by cricket statistics, which later evolved into advanced mathematical skills.
Although his JEE rank was lower than he hoped, he entered IIT Madras to study electrical engineering. While there, he explored competitive programming and data science, eventually winning a Kaggle machine learning contest that set him on the path to AI entrepreneurship.
English (US) ·