A new AI darling is making waves in Silicon Valley. It’s called Perplexity, and according to reports, both Meta and Apple have quietly explored acquiring it. Valued at a staggering $14 billion following a May funding round, the startup is being hailed as a revolutionary threat to Google Search’s search dominance.
But here’s the thing: it mostly just summarizes web results and sends you links.
So why the frenzy?
Perplexity billed itself an “answer engine.” You ask a question, and it uses large language models to spit out a human-sounding summary, complete with footnotes. It’s essentially ChatGPT with a bibliography. You might ask for the best books about the French Revolution or a breakdown of the Genius Act. In seconds, it generates a paragraph with links to Wikipedia, news outlets, or Reddit threads.
Its pitch is a cleaner, ad-free, chatbot-driven search experience. No SEO junk, no scrolling.
But critics say it’s little more than a glorified wrapper around Google and OpenAI’s APIs, with minimal proprietary tech and lots of smoke. It’s fast, clean, and slick. But, they argue, at its core, it’s mostly just reorganizing the internet.
Big Tech’s Obsession
That hasn’t stopped the hype. In May 2025, the San Francisco, California based company closed another $500 million funding round, pushing its valuation to $14 billion, a sharp increase from its $9 billion valuation in December 2024. Jeff Bezos, via the Jeff Bezos Family Fund, and Nvidia are among its notable backers
And now, tech giants are circling. According to Bloomberg, Apple has held talks about acquiring Perplexity. Meta has also reportedly considered the move, though no formal offers have been confirmed.
The logic is clear. Perplexity is fast-growing and increasingly seen as a “Google killer,” especially among tech influencers and X power users. Traffic to its site has exploded in recent months. The company now offers a Chrome extension, mobile app, and a Pro version that gives users access to top-tier AI models like GPT-4 and Claude.
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