Catenaa, Wednesday, June 25, 2025- Apple executives have held early internal talks about a possible bid for artificial intelligence startup Perplexity, Bloomberg News reported last Friday, signaling the tech giant’s push to boost AI capabilities and potentially reduce reliance on Google.
The discussions, involving Apple’s mergers and acquisitions head Adrian Perica and services chief Eddy Cue, remain preliminary and no formal offer has been made.
Perplexity confirmed no current merger talks, and Apple did not comment on the report.
Perplexity, valued at $14 billion in its latest funding round, develops AI-powered search tools delivering information summaries similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Apple aims to integrate such AI-driven search technology into its Safari browser, possibly ending its long-standing partnership with Alphabet’s Google.
Bloomberg also noted that Meta Platforms attempted to acquire Perplexity earlier this year. Meta recently invested $14.8 billion in Scale AI and appointed its CEO Alexandr Wang to lead a new superintelligence unit.
The move reflects intensifying competition among Big Tech firms to enhance AI services amid growing user adoption of AI search, particularly among younger demographics.
Apple’s acquisition of Perplexity would be its largest deal to date and could reshape the digital search landscape.
The US Department of Justice’s proposed remedies to curb Google’s dominance include banning payments to keep Google as default search engine, adding regulatory pressure on the market.
