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Executives at Apple are weighing the possibility of buying buzzy AI start-up Perplexity, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
Citing anonymous sources close to the matter, the report said that talks within Apple to bid for an acquisition of Perplexity were still in early stages. A spokesperson for Perplexity told Reuters that the company had no knowledge of any acquisition-related plans or discussions.
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If Apple were to go through with the purchase, it would mark the company's most ambitious and expensive acquisition yet: Perplexity's latest funding round left the company with a valuation of around $14 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Apple and Perplexity did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
To compete with AI chatbots and Google's increasing investment in AI search, Apple plans to add AI-powered features to its Safari browser, Reuters reported in May. The move would be bad news for Google, which has paid around $20 billion annually to be the default search engine on iPhones for years. That arrangement is already under scrutiny from regulators as part of the company's antitrust violations.
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While Google is still the undisputed ruler of search, new generative AI-powered tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT have been rapidly transforming many people's -- especially among younger generations -- basic approach to retrieving information online. Google has responded by introducing its own LLM-powered features into its search function, most notably in its AI Overviews feature.
Apple tries to catch up
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