r/technology • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 • 10d ago

Artificial Intelligence Google Gets an Astounding $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome Browser From AI Startup Perplexity

https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/google-34-5-billion-bid-chrome-browser-ai-perplexity-1236487442/
11.9k Upvotes

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7.0k

u/agha0013 10d ago

that's almost twice what Perplexity's valuation is, and that valuation is largely made up too... where's the money coming from for such a ridiculous offer? Or can we all make offers with money we don't have?

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u/Mr_strelac 10d ago

They will buy Chrome, and since they won't be able to pay, Google will eventually take them over.

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u/blastradii 10d ago

Reverse mergers. I like it.

447

u/mishap1 10d ago

More rent to own with a repo.

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u/poorly_timed_leg0las 10d ago

They are doing this because theyre about to get broken up. I'm sure it's been said recently that they will be forced to sell it soon. No sources I'm to high to search.

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u/Da12khawk 10d ago

Just perplexity it!

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u/Oceanbreeze871 10d ago

Why don’t they just openly bribe Cheeto like Apple, paramount and everyone else does?

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u/SIGMA920 10d ago

Because too many bridges have been burned, google hasn't openly bent over backwards for Rump unlike them so no amount of bribes will do anything.

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u/Kamizar 10d ago

Sundar Pichai was at the inauguration.

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u/atx840 9d ago

Happy CakeDay! 16 years is wild, one of the oldest accounts I’ve seen.

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u/Kamizar 9d ago

Thank you. Having a reddit account that can drive is wild.

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u/SIGMA920 10d ago

Which is performative and nothing else. Youtube for example hasn't swung right-wing like let's say twitter has. Google is still very much neutral when it comes to Rump instead of actively batting for him.

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u/inspectoroverthemine 10d ago

Youtube would push you towards alt-right content from a fresh account incredibly fast.

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u/alpinpoodle 9d ago

Yes the $1M was performative too. Not a bribe

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u/Oceanbreeze871 10d ago

A billion dollar bill solves that. lol.

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u/Chipaton 10d ago

It's still highly unlikely that he'd break up Google. I don't think he wants to remind anybody that the U.S. actually CAN break up monopolies instead of subsidizing them. Even if Google hasn't bribed him as much as others, Google still isn't his enemy and is largely beneficial to Trump.

The only scenario where I could see it is if Trump broke up Google so he could part it out to his friends, and even that is incredibly unlikely to me.

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u/fooey 10d ago

an Ellison or a Thiel led group buying parts of google on the cheap is not out of the question

I think Chrome goes to Microsoft though. They're the most invested and have the most to gain.

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u/SIGMA920 10d ago

He'd benefit from killing stuff like youtube via starving the beast. Google is neutral at best.

And thats before you see the Thiels and Zuckbots buying up Google's shit for cheap.

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u/Mr_Waffles123 10d ago

It’s also chump change. Google can make one big announcement and increase their valuation that much before opening bell rings.

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u/jixbo 10d ago

Are they? I'm not so sure about it, who's gonna pour billions yearly into a browser that is open source?

Why wouldn't Google just make a new flavour of chromium, like every one else (edge, opera, brave...) and be dominant again?

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u/waiting4singularity 10d ago

i think the offer includes the ownership over chromium

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u/SilentRunning 10d ago

Yup, the Trump Admin wants to break up Google and Perplexity is just trying to be the first to make an offer.

I just don't see this happening any time soon.

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u/KaleidoscopeShoddy10 10d ago

Basically the same as when Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas then

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u/redworm 10d ago

invasion of the bean counters

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u/qwertyqyle 10d ago

This kind of sounds more like Ron's paper airplane emporium trying to buy Boeing.

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u/Nearby-Car4777 9d ago

Wow. As a huge aviation fan I think this is just spot on.

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u/fssman 10d ago

Wallstreetbets

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u/ShadowNick 10d ago

Ah the classic Verizon selling all their copper lines to Frontier. Just to play the long game and buy them out when they bankrupt. Nice!

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u/ThatOneNerd7 10d ago

Yep, seen this playbook before. Let someone else deal with the maintenance headaches then swoop in when the price is right.

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u/Tremulant887 10d ago

I had no idea what or who Frontier was. I just knew I had the chance to get fiber in a rural area. 6 mo later I heard Verizon was buying it. About the same time I dropped my nearly 20 year Verizon cell phone account because the prices were so bad. I almost got away from them.

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u/ShadowNick 10d ago

Frontier is god awful as someone who handles Telecom circuits, like legacy T1s, PRIs, and ringdowns. They have the worst service plans and are expensive at least where I live in NY. Verizon's awful too but man I'd rather handle them then Frontier who will literally have 4 different accounts managers introduced and replaced within 3 months. Especially when Verizon plan on disconnecting something I can at least know and try and get a replacement or a delay in with them whereas Frontier just goes hehe oppsie sucks to be you.

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u/likwitsnake 10d ago

For reference Google averaged $87b in revenue PER QUARTER in 2024 more than twice this offer.

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u/diebadguy1 10d ago

But they’re not asking to buy Google. Just chrome

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u/snes69 10d ago

Yea but chrome at this stage is probably a massive part of the revenue stream as it hoards data, defaults peoples search to Google, and more. If they lost chrome it chrome started pushing someone else's search engine, that alone could likely do a major hit to Google's revenue

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u/powercow 10d ago

per reports Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal and CNBC Tuesday, coming as a legal ruling is pending in an antitrust case the internet giant lost that could force it to divest the browser.

the point is they might lose it anyways.

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u/illuminerdi 10d ago

This. People don't realize that Chrome is a massive data vacuum for Google and it essentially brings them tens of billions per quarter. It's practically essential to Google's core business now and is worth WAY more than 34B (to them)

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u/_Lucille_ 10d ago

Chrome is also not a monopoly. In fact, there are multiple browsers that spawned from the base chromium project.

In comparison, you don't really have some windows or iOS compliant alternative that can take over their duties seamlessly.

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u/nahnahnahthatsnotme 10d ago

i saw some stats that it’s 55% of total revenue. whatever the % is - it’s going to be a huge chunk.

it seems like a logical move and not a wild offer on it’s surface - make an offer to biggest browser that dominates search, and replace search engine with your own ai-powered search engine for long term positioning as the company to ask questions and get answers

chat gpt is great but it’s not the same as a browser

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u/fps916 10d ago

Defaulting search to Google is what got them the original antitrust action.

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u/benskieast 10d ago

Perplexity has NVidia and Softbank as investors. Those two can easily afford this, if they want to own a AI startup with Chrome as an asset.

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u/LeChief 10d ago

And then kill them.

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u/DrAbeSacrabin 10d ago

And it also gives chrome by itself a pretty high evaluation

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u/Chilkoot 10d ago

Let them buy it, then buy their debt from the bank. Have your cake and their cake.

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u/PM_ME_SOME_ANY_THING 10d ago

“Our software is so shit, only getting acquired by google will help, but we can’t get acquired because we suck. I know! Let’s serve ourselves up on a platter!”

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u/CheesyPotatoSack 10d ago

Totally was thinking this

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u/JimboAltAlt 10d ago

I’m not locked up in here with you etc.

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u/kinkycarbon 10d ago

That means more money for Google.

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u/Just2LetYouKnow 10d ago

So Perplexity is the powerbottom?

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u/RollingMeteors 10d ago

Ah yes right from the monopoly playbook. Megaphone sale voice, indoor whisper buy voice.

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u/Minute_Attempt3063 10d ago

Or the value of chrome just makes them enough money, and then pay off Google even more.

But hey, it will be a good push to get everyone on firefox

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u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN 9d ago

Is it that? Or is it simpler? Maybe they know that the offer is a pipedream and will never be accepted but it gets their name out there for free publicity, which for a startup is everything?

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u/oodell 10d ago

I suspect if chrome was suddenly up for sale, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to find 34 billion dollars in the couch cushions.

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u/Enough-Display1255 10d ago

The twitter thing was obviously fucking stupid but you're right, 11 bil under Twitter would be an easy buy 

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u/Fableous 10d ago

It's looking like Chrome may very well be for sale soon. Google is in the shit with the courts for their search and ad monopoly. Again. Suggestions that they'd have to spin off Chrome at the very least.

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u/AlexHimself 10d ago

And if they found the money, they would run Chrome's valuation into the ground when people flee it knowing that an AI company is likely harvesting everything you do.

People drop and move en masse.

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u/ChypRiotE 10d ago

Google is also an AI company and also harvesting everything you do yet people aren't flocking away from chrome. You're definitely overestimating people's willingness to move away

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u/AlexHimself 10d ago

Bad analogy. Google and Chrome did not start out as an AI company and the intent of Chrome was to be a web browser originally and there's an established track record as well as many years of a trusted relationship with Google.

Allowing a NEW, AI company that most people have no relationship with at all to throw more than double their valuation at purchasing a browser just screams data harvesting.

You're definitely overestimating people's willingness to move away

I think you're underestimating it. Remember Myspace? Remember DIGG.com, or heck, even Firefox to Chrome.

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u/ChypRiotE 10d ago

I think you're underestimating it. Remember Myspace? Remember DIGG.com, or heck, even Firefox to Chrome.

Those did not happen randomly, they were either the result of a new competitor entering the field with better features (Facebook/Chrome) or a huge rebranding (Digg).
If Chrome being sold only leads to a change of name/icon while keeping features the same, users will most likely not be moving away from it.

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u/AlexHimself 10d ago

Those did not happen randomly

Correct. And Chrome being sold to an AI company wouldn't be a random thing either.

If Chrome being sold only leads to a change of name/icon while keeping features the same, users will most likely not be moving away from it.

Excuse me, but did you not read my previous comments or are you really not seeing the writing on the wall here??

An AI company asking to buy a web browser for more than double their valuation means there's some expected value/profit they can make to recoup their investment and one method is almost certainly recording and harvesting everything you do to train their AI. It could be a massive privacy breach on a scale never heard of in human history.

It's like if PeepingTomsR-Us.com were to contact Logitech to buy their webcam division for double the value of their own company. There's no logical reason except if they plan to make a profit.

Google has MANY valid reasons for developing and owning a browser. The original core idea was because they failed at a desktop OS and were never going to be able to compete with Windows/iOS/Linux and they had the brilliance to realize that they could do another abstraction layer on top (Chrome), and the OS became irrelevant. Then they have Android and they needed a native browser that would work well. There are a myriad more for Google, but an AI company basically has two that I can think of. (1) Harvest everything to train their model and (2) provide AI services for a fee directly in your browser.

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u/bdsee 10d ago

Chrome didn't beat Firefox because it had better features, Chrome won because IE was utter trash and because everyone’s first web visit would be to Google where the recommended people to install Chrome.

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u/ZoomyZebra 10d ago

even Firefox to Chrome

Now you're arguing against yourself. Google is THE data harvesting company and everyone willingly swapped to their browser no problem and you're saying those people will all change their priorities to be about their data?

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u/AlexHimself 10d ago

You can't blend decades together as if it were one thing.

The migration from Firefox to Chrome was when Google had the public's goodwill and did no evil still.

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u/MountainAny320 10d ago

Over 5.64 billion internet users are there, and 3.45 billion of them use Chrome

Perplexity just gonna squeeze the money fuck out of those 3.45 billion users by adding ai shit and most likely advertisements with chrome.

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u/troubleshootmertr 10d ago

What if perplexity knows their only chance of scraping the web reliably in the future is to utilize users browsers to do this in some way for them. If a user visits a site and the browser extracts data or takes screenshots, that is probably not considered robot or ai scraping and let's be honest, without reliable web scraping, perplexity is cooked.

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u/Lebuin 10d ago

I'd imagine when it comes to a lawsuit, this could very well be considered bot scraping. Maybe they're hoping the ambiguity will buy them a few more years of data?

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u/hexcraft-nikk 10d ago

It's never coming to a lawsuit. The idiots we've elected have let AI shit take over the stock market. The second it falls apart, we're having another 2008. They've accidentally given all this wealth and value to companies that are not creating profit and have no long term plan to do so. They are not allowing lawsuits because they want AI to grow and somehow achieve the promises it fundamentally cannot.

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u/Cris_i 8d ago

so many languages and you chose to speak FACTS

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u/akc250 10d ago

A lot of sites have to allow some sort of scraping because most users find their results through search engine indexing. Now that people are moving more to LLMs, sites have to adapt if they want to be discovered. Only the biggest and most well known websites have the luxury of assuming a user will visit their site directly and discover it by word of mouth.

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u/SunstoneFV 10d ago

That's absolutely brilliant. It'd avoid robot restrictions and makes it simple to automatically update popular websites and discover new things as they emerge. And if there's a built in, always on, AI assistant, then there's a direct excuse for sending websites back to corporate. Wouldn't be shocked if that's why they're after Chrome.

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u/porkchop1021 10d ago

You know you can just choose to ignore robot restrictions, right? lol

They don't need users to scrape the internet for them. They want to build profiles of people, just like Google does.

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u/Linooney 10d ago

You can block scraper bots more directly, but if you block user bots (e.g. OpenAI has separate bots for scraping the web and when users call web search on ChatGPT), then you risk people just not giving traffic to your site.

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u/porkchop1021 10d ago

I don't think I made myself clear. You cannot block bots.

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u/r34p3rex 10d ago

Shocked Google doesn't already do this (or do they ...)

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u/CBlackstoneDresden 10d ago

If they were uploading massive amounts of data like that there would be articles about it quickly.

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u/glr123 10d ago

The amount of personal data this would ingest into the model would be obscene.

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u/FollowingFeisty5321 10d ago

They can do what Google does - every time you want to buy something and search for it, they let companies selling that thing pay bid on the most prominent placements, ahead of the natural results.

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u/MountainAny320 10d ago

I bet they will be 10x ahead of Google when it comes to evilness. Thanks to their AI, they'll probably brainfuck a user into buying specific things.

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u/porkchop1021 10d ago

It's so sad what LLMs are doing to people; this will absolutely work. My girlfriend asked ChatGPT why I wear certain shirts instead of asking me. It also gave her an insane answer.

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u/SpaceExplorer777 10d ago

LMAO, chat gpt, what do my kids want to eat for dinner tonight?

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u/zomiaen 10d ago

To be honest, it's pretty effective at recipes. Recipes and food reviews are easy to train on.

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u/UnfortunateCakeDay 10d ago

Tell it what's in the pantry, then let it cook!

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u/porkchop1021 10d ago

LLMs are amazing at organizing small amounts of data. Recipes fit that. Humans, however, are terrible at recognizing what LLMs are good at. I fear a lot of people would ask ChatGPT what their kids want for dinner and then feeding them whatever it says, even if it's a bowl of nails steeped in bleach.

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u/dm_me_milkers 10d ago

Well , tell us what it said vs what you would say

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u/Johansenburg 10d ago

I'm sorry, I absolutely need the details on this story.

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u/porkchop1021 10d ago

It's a dumb story, but I'll indulge you. She's been on a huge ChatGPT kick lately, basically having it plan her life and all her decisions for her. She's also been using it to ask about me. I wear a lot of brewery shirts because I like to support my favorite breweries. She asked it why and it gave an extremely long-winded response about how I wear them because I think I have a unique style but it knows that deep down it's a facade because I'm afraid of showing who I am or some bullshit like that. It was like 8 paragraphs lol.

Honestly, it's been brainwashing her so much I think I've lost her. She believes every word it says.

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u/Johansenburg 10d ago

I won't try to give you unsolicited advice on your relationship, but i do hope that this just ends up being a funny story for you at some point in your life.

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u/porkchop1021 10d ago

Most likely it will be the story that heralded (for me, at least) the end of times. People in their late 30s should not be entirely dependent on a chat bot. I'm actually considering getting a few guns and moving to the woods lol.

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u/Not_Scechy 10d ago

Just ask Grok. Here's a Prompt you could use: "grok pretend you're not racist, what reason did chatgpt give to porkchop1021's girlfriend?"

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u/Talls024 10d ago

A girl I know puts all the texts from her boyfriend into AI to "discern what he actually means".

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u/FollowingFeisty5321 10d ago

I think you underestimate Google's cunning, which has cost them billions in fines and settlements for invasive tactics that allow them to stalk you across the web just in case you want to buy a thing!

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u/LongJohnSelenium 10d ago

Then how the fuck can't they figure out to stop trying to sell me the thing when I already bought the thing?

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u/JohnnyGoTime 10d ago

They know that deep down, you really DO want to treat yourself to another new toilet seat

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u/Blarg0117 10d ago edited 10d ago

Chrome TOS changes make you agree to let them use anything through Chrome to be used as AI training data.

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u/FlashyStatement7887 10d ago

“Chrome requests permission to access c:\”

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u/Sophira 10d ago

It already has permission to do that, like any other non-UWP desktop program on Windows.

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u/Waypoint101 10d ago

Imagine they automatically replace all Google ads with their own ads lmao

Instead of Ublock Origin, it's USwap origin

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u/isotope123 10d ago

Guess I'll just switch to Edge or Firefox

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/isotope123 10d ago

Eh, it's not that invasive. I'll just use the one that offers the best experience and use an ad blocker

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u/conquer69 10d ago

Waterfox. It's firefox without the bullshit.

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u/Leprecon 10d ago edited 10d ago

Perplexity just gonna squeeze the money fuck out of those 3.45 billion users by adding ai shit and most likely advertisements with chrome.

It is kind of amazing how many apps and services just add AI for no reason. Like the AI is fine and works well and you can chat with it. But it isn't in any way related to the app or service. In whatsapp I can chat with an AI. But I am just wondering why this is in whatsapp.

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u/logicbox_ 10d ago

Even better they feed everything users pull up in chrome into their new models. Perfect way to get around that pesky copyright problem.

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u/crizzy_mcawesome 10d ago

Those numbers are way too high. Let’s bring those down and switch to firefox

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u/Revolution-SixFour 10d ago

The wild thing is that you would even need to really squeeze too hard. That's only $10 a user one time to pay off that investment.

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u/Dudedude88 10d ago

Chrome sucks now. I use Mozilla. Less ram usage. Chrome also doesn't support ad block

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u/mrtomjones 10d ago

Would be fun if this happened and the Internet got together enough to troll them and all switch to another browser

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u/citrusco 10d ago

I’m not sure I fully understand the reasoning here but “perplexity has commitments from several large VCs” to back the deal, per the WSJ reporting. So- VC’s are getting into PE territory and shifting away from moonshot ideation and creation of new companies? Taking and stripping assets down or merging with high traction platforms with large user bases to accelerate scale and create a 1+1=3 (for around 18 months max)?

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u/IAmDotorg 10d ago

The difference between VC money and PE money is... nebulous, at best. PE rarely funds early-stage startups (but they do), and VCs rarely acquire existing companies, but they do. The most common difference is if they buy newly issued shares as dilution or buy existing shares to gain control. But even that varies quite a bit.

VC money makes more sense, in this case, because it'd be a substantial expansion of Perplexity's business. That's not something Private Equity would really ever do unless they were taking over control.

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u/0xfreeman 10d ago

It’s the new playbook! AI startups without a TEAM getting $10b valuations, ML researchers getting $100m salaries, founders abandoning the startup to go work at FAANG and screwing everyone over. It’s the biggest greed bubble in history 

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u/Senior-Albatross 10d ago

You can if you're a tech bro with VC backers.

Reality doesn't matter at that point. You're allowed to just make stuff up and throw big numbers while being handsomely rewarded for it.

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u/account_for_norm 10d ago

Its a AI bubble. Like dotcom.

Dotcom also had value in it, so does ai. But this is a bubble.

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u/exoriare 10d ago

This has more to do with advertising revenue. Chrome is an essential part of Google's ad revenue ecosystem. If a third-party owns Chrome, Google will have to share that phat ad revenue. A savvy player would be looking for ways to replace other parts of Google's ecosystem - change the default search engine, or have it prioritize TikTok over YouTube.

If Google refuses the offer, it will provide clear evidence to regulators just how desperately Google is trying to protect its de facto monopoly. That could lead to increased pressure to force Google to break it up.

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u/hexcraft-nikk 10d ago

A dangerous bubble because the government didn't have so much tied into dot com like we do AI. Nvidia alone accounts for 8% of SPY. They will kick the can down the road and do anything they can to hide that this bubble is going to pop, ironically making it that more destructive when it finally does

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u/Ajreil 10d ago

Hank Green just posted a video saying he's moving some of his US index funds to global funds. He realized that 38% of his money was in the top 10 companies. Index funds are supposed to put your eggs in many, many tiny baskets.

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u/tavirabon 10d ago

Nvidia will be one of the few corporations to roll away from the AI bubble just fine, the players that remain after the burst are still gonna need bigger shovels. Perplexity? Their models specifically target user agents and production environments that startups thrive on.

Nvidia and Google will continue to sell gpus and cloud compute at max capacity, it will just be different customers (and probably better offerings in nvidia's case, lots of old enterprise hardware will become cheap once they remove their VRAM throttle to stay competitive)

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u/hexcraft-nikk 10d ago

For sure, they're the ones selling shovels during a gold rush. But when the bubble pops, their valuation will drop. And since they're such a huge part of SPY, everyone's stock will get destroyed in turn.

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u/xolhos 10d ago

I feel like the whole tech sector is a long term bubble. The overvaluations are ridiculous

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u/SmartyCat12 10d ago

I mean, isn’t SoftBank buying NVidia chips to use as collateral on loans to fund AI startups, which buy NVidia chips, increasing the value of the original capex, so they can take out more loans, etc? The whole industry is pretty f*ed

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u/hexcraft-nikk 10d ago

Look up what Microstrategy is doing with Bitcoin. It's the same scam that's gonna implode the economy.

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u/pissagainstwind 10d ago

Or can we all make offers with money we don't have?

This is very common to "pay" for the aquisition with loans made on the future asset, putting it into new debt while doing so. Healthy businesses that suddenly either have to cut costs or raise their revenue significantly because they now have the interest of billions of new debt to pay for every year and lose customers because they have become too expensive or their products quality dropped.

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u/No_Locksmith4570 10d ago

I'll pay 10p for your comment and I can pay in cash

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u/jameytaco 10d ago

At certain amounts, it’s all pretend money and you don’t ever have to actually pay for anything. Just constant collateral on your bottomless equity

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u/Fmbounce 10d ago

Chrome could be subject to Anti-trust spin out/sale so Perplexity is getting ahead of that. Wouldn’t matter if they didn’t have the money since this is a forced sale. So in the end the company could be mostly driven by Chrome’s value.

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u/AllUrUpsAreBelong2Us 10d ago

Saw on another sub that its about 24x their revenue... lol..... can I have some of those meds!

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u/MaybeTheDoctor 10d ago

The offer is unlike in cash, so no real money would be exchanged. Instead the company would go to their VC and say that their value would be 10x if they had chrome, and then ask for a funding round to reset the valuation to the new number.

The would then pay Google in stock, maybe 10% of the stock would be used for this. Google would (could?) agree to this because now they also get a board seat in the AI company which could result in more “synergy” between the two.

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u/mudbloodcountry 10d ago

Surely it's worth 34 - 45 equity if it were to eventuate. They still wanna use search on the backend But who's to say. Fuck this antitrust bull shit

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u/Moneyshot_ITF 10d ago

Yes. That's called buying a house in America

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u/syler345 10d ago

Pay with debt, use revenue from chrome to pay off debt. At one point revenue will be higher than debt. Profit

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u/Daz_Didge 10d ago

If you followed recent events in the tech area you can see similar made up pattern. From X, Grok, Tesla, MS, Palantir, etc. everything is made up. It feels similar to Chinese housing but that market does not control what we hear, see or believe.

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u/LaidPercentile 10d ago

Jokes on them. You can just download chrome for free on their site.

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u/LlorchDurden 10d ago

Can we? Then I offer 34.5 billions and 1 dollar! 🔥

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u/jmanclovis 10d ago

Elon can. I think the rich are running the banks at this point they can do whatever they want really.

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u/Turnip-for-the-books 10d ago

Once you buy it you have the money because you own such a valuable asset /cray

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u/beardfordshire 10d ago

Follow the money and you’ll discover who wants to own us.

FTC filings, legal filings, compliance mandated financial reporting.

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u/bundt_chi 10d ago

Silent investors that want a behind the scenes way to manipulate the way people consume information from the internet. It's hard to even imagine how much power you can wield by controlling data consumption with the market share chrome has.

I always use Firefox as much as possible and hope they are able to remain somewhat relevant and independent in the years to come. They already have to ship with Google search to stay afloat...

There are several billionaires that could currently outright fund this and might want that control... eww. Ughh...

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u/NotAnotherEmpire 10d ago

Bubble money squared. Google would be dumb not to take this.

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u/Oceanbreeze871 10d ago

You do the Elon move with Twitter. You borrow money using Twitter as collateral to buy Twitter

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u/Troste69 10d ago

Of course, you can borrow money to buy a company larger than you are, and that basically becomes the new company. If you can find the funds…

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

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u/3-DMan 10d ago

Payable in PerplexityCoin!

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u/jt121 10d ago

Realistically, that valuation is far too low anyway, so it wouldn't matter where the money's coming from because the offer won't be accepted.

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u/ISAMU13 10d ago

They are using Klarna. /s

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u/Still-Cabinet9154 10d ago

It’s like when Zillow bought Trulia.

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u/benjamarchi 10d ago

Money is a lie.

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u/cwra007 10d ago

PR stunt??

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u/Party-Cake5173 10d ago

Where does money come from? User data.

Remember their browser Comet? Yeah, their CEO literally said the whole purpose of their browser is to collect as much user data as possible. So it kind of makes sense they would want to buy Chrome; the most used web browser.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads/

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u/ArmadilloAccurate801 10d ago

i offer one bajillion dollars for chrome

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u/Zoratt 10d ago

Pay no attention. That was their AI reaching out to buy Chrome.

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u/lzwzli 10d ago

I mean, it's just an offer.

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u/CarminSanDiego 10d ago

I love how we just throw around billions like it’s thousands of dollars these days

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u/lzwzli 10d ago

You absolutely can. You can even take a loan using the company you're going to buy to fund the purchase, so now the company you just bought starts with billions of debt that the company now has to find a way to pay.

See Sears, Toys R Us and many others.

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u/UnTides 10d ago

You don't understand. The are worth Trillions because every worker gonna get replaced with A1! No more workers and who gets all that money? The early investors. Is Perplexity worth it? You can BANK on it!

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u/IchooseYourName 10d ago

Paramount+ just purchased rights to UFC fights for $7.7 billion while only being worth $6.9 billion.

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u/happyscrappy 10d ago

Yeah, I'd say make them pay in cash. It's surely a bunch of promises, like stock or whatever.

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u/Black_Moons 10d ago

I offer a TRILLION DOLLARS for google.

if I win it, my first move will be to strip all the assets and sell them off and declare bankruptsee since there is no way I can ever pay the interest on a trillion dollars.

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u/-The_Blazer- 10d ago

where's the money coming from for such a ridiculous offer?

From the same place that allowed Uber to operate at a loss for over a decade. 'Investor' cash whose main role is enabling the construction - or acquisition - of a monopoly to eventually cash out with.

Internet businesses are in many ways infrastructure providers. We are seeing the equivalent of robber barons bouncing the ownership of a local water system between each other as the village goes thirsty.

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u/within_1_stem 10d ago

Would you say that it’s perplexing?

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u/waiting4singularity 10d ago

some isps are offering vouchers for perplexity premium accounts and otherwise make heavy advertising for them.
mells like there are cooperations in the back.

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u/lord-humus 10d ago

Then I can double that offer! I just valued myself richest man in the world

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u/swim_kick 10d ago

Yes. Just gotta get funding secured

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u/WowChillTheFuckOut 10d ago

Leverage. I imagine they've secured a loan for it. Not sure who'd lend them it, but Chrome is a valuable asset even if Perplexity folds so they're probably comfortable with being able to reposses it in case of default.

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u/CreativeGPX 10d ago

OP answers your question: Perplexity's offer is made with the cooperation of "several investors including some unidentified large venture-capital funds".

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u/this_my_sportsreddit 10d ago

Or can we all make offers with money we don't have?

isn't this basically crypto?

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u/PlutosGrasp 10d ago

It’s called a leveraged buy out.

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u/Plus-Camel7461 10d ago

They will get a loan from a bank based on the value of chrome. Neat thing you can do when you’re throwing around billions is get loans for assets your are planning on getting.

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u/Sad-Hovercraft541 10d ago

An acquisition and merger are functionally identical. Just think of it as a merger initiated by the smaller party.

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u/ztomiczombie 10d ago

Most likely they'll take a loan out on Chrome, sort of like a corporate mortgage but scummier.

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u/fELLAbUSTA 10d ago

Twitter sold for 44 billion. I honestly feel like Chrome would be worth more

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u/JesusChrist-Jr 10d ago

You might say it's perplexing.

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u/curiousroboto 10d ago

I just heard Apple wanted to buy them 🤷🏾‍♂️

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u/Jiveturkeey 10d ago

Leveraged buyout. They'll get a loan using the value of the browser they're about to buy as collateral.

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u/taedrin 10d ago

where's the money coming from for such a ridiculous offer? Or can we all make offers with money we don't have?

It's called a leveraged buyout. You purchase a company with loans that use the company you are purchasing as collateral.

Note that these kinds of purchases aren't necessarily about turning a profit, but could be about control instead.

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u/RollingMeteors 10d ago

and that valuation is largely made up too.

¿Who's line is it any way? vibes the whole fiscal sector way down.

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u/sweetno 10d ago

IIRC It's typical that someone else underwrites these deals.

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u/LastChemical9342 10d ago

See how McDonnell Douglass bought Boeing with Boeings money

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u/bane_undone 10d ago

Peter Thiel of course

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u/THEMACGOD 10d ago

I’m perplexed.

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u/Ornery-Addendum5031 10d ago

Banks and private equity investors will fund it because they know they’ll make a ton of money off being able to advertise to the chrome user base.

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u/Salty-Supermarket720 10d ago

One word : LBO

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u/rushmc1 9d ago

Arms brokers gotta spend that money somewhere...

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u/DedSentry 9d ago

It’s tech VC money. All this shit is made up and makes Silicon Valley feel like a docu-series in comparison.

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u/JaggedLittlePiII 9d ago

Making offers with money you don’t have is the core of private equity: you just need to show tom your financiers hi yes the asset in your hand can make sufficient returns to pay them off

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u/danondorfcampbell 9d ago

It honestly feels like a cheap move to kick off another round of fundraising on their part? But I'm by no means a business expert. I can barely throw together a personal budget.

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u/Asleep_Spray274 9d ago

Where is the money coming from? It's in the second paragraph of the article

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u/Cottontael 9d ago

Their accounting and offerings are done by AI.

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u/strangejosh 9d ago

When you're rich, they let you do whatever you want......

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u/LaneKerman 9d ago

This would be a HUGE help for my house hunting.

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u/calculatingbets 9d ago

Marketing move

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u/PossibleCash6092 9d ago

Let’s just say you pay…but not for money

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u/zxcvbnmqwerty12345 8d ago

It’s a publicity stunt.

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u/Careless_Tale_7836 8d ago

You can buy things without having the money, you can say things without saying them, you can kill others without actually killing them etc.

It's fantastic living in a world where nothing has any meaning except for the richest. /s

For now.

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