Apple executives are currenty discussing whether to make a bid to acquire AI Startup Perplexity AI, according to a new report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Perplexity has proven to be a popular AI-infused web search engine.
Gurman says Mergers and acquisitions chief Adrian Perica, services head Eddy Cue, and other executives overseeing Apple’s AI efforts have been engaged in discussions which he says “are at an early stage and may not lead to an offer.”
As is usual in situations like this, Apple declined to comment, while Perplexity for its part said that it has “no knowledge of any current or future M&A discussions involving Perplexity.”
Apple could make a bid for Perplexity, depending on the results of the ongoing Google antitrust trial, as Apple’s roughtly $20 billion per year deal with the search engine provider to be the default Safari search engine could be nullified if the ruling goes against Google.
Perplexity’s most recent funding round valued the company at $14 billion, so an full acquisition by Apple would be the largest deal in the Cupertino company’s history by far, easily topping its $3 billion years-agp purchase of Beats.
Apple would not necessarily need to acquire Perplexity, but could instead make a deal with the company to add its AI search capabilities to Safari and Siri. The two firms have met several times in recent months to discuss the possibilities of Apple using the dmaller firms technology.
There is one thing that could possibly throw a wrench into the works when it comes to and Apple – Perplexity deal of any kind. The AI firm is said to be close to a deal with Samsung to bring its SI features to Samsung devices. Such a deal would definitely complicate any potential deals with Apple.
