Google Chrome: Artificial Intelligence Startup Perplexity AI has surprised the Tech world. The company’s CEO Arvind Srinivas has offered $ 34.5 billion to buy Google Chrome while Chrome is also not officially available for sale. This dialect is more than its valuation ($ 14 billion) of Perplexity. The company’s goal is to strengthen its grip in AI search race and make a straight access to about 3 billion users of Chrome.
Who is Arvind Srinivas?
Arvind Srinivas is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI. Srinivas of Indian origin started his studies with IIT Madras where he completed dual degree in Electrical Engineering in 2017. He then obtained PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
In 2022, he laid the foundation of Perplexity AI in association with Andy Convinski, Dennis Yrats and Johnny Ho. So far, the company has raised funding of about 1 billion US dollars from veteran investors like NVIDIA and Softbank in Japan and its latest valuation is estimated at $ 14 billion.
Srinivas’s career started as a research intern in Openai in 2018. After this, he also acted in similar roles in Google and Deepmind between 2020 and 2021. Before starting Perplexity AI, they once again returned as a research scientist in Openai.
Growing legal pressure on Google
Behind this offer is also the background of the ongoing entrance cases against Google in America. Recently, an American court ruled that Google has unfair monopoly on online search. The US Justice Department suggested that Chrome’s sales could be a way to restore competition. However, Google has planned to challenge and appeal this decision and at present there is no indication to sell chrome.
Funding promise
Perplexity has claimed that many big investment funds are ready to fund this deal but the complete details have not been revealed. The company has so far raised about $ 1 billion from investors like NVIDIA and SoftBank. According to the terms of the deal, Perplexity will keep the chromium code open-source will invest $ 3 billion in two years and will not make any change in the default search engine.
Openai and Yahoo interested
Perplexity is not the only company that is interested in chrome. The documents presented in the court revealed that Openai and Yahoo also searched the possibilities of buying chrome. In 2023, Openai sought search API access from Google for Chatgpt but Google refused it due to the match. Currently Openai is dependent on Microsoft Bing for the search capacity of its chatbot.
Future uncertain but bet bigger
Experts believe that Google will not wash hands with chrome so easily because it is not only an important part of search but also the company’s AI strategy. The data from Chrome strengthens the AI model of Google and supports new features such as AI-generated search overview. However, if the US Department of Justice challenges the monopoly on Google’s search infrastructure, Chrome’s future can become the biggest game-changer in the tech industry.
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