As Apple scrambles to play catch-up within the generative AI race, a brand new report says the corporate has thought of making its largest acquisition ever.
In response to Bloomberg, Apple executives have held inner discussions a few potential bid for Perplexity AI, the fast-growing AI startup recognized for its conversational internet search platform.
This may mark Apple’s largest acquisition ever
As reported by Mark Gurman, the talks are nonetheless at an early stage and will not end in an precise supply, however the thought has reportedly been floated between Apple’s mergers and acquisitions lead Adrian Perica, companies chief Eddy Cue, and high AI management inside the corporate.
Perplexity not too long ago closed a funding spherical that valued it at $14 billion, which might make its acquisition an unprecedented transfer for Apple, nicely above the $3 billion Beats deal in 2014.
Right here’s Gurman on the attainable acquisition:
“Shopping for Perplexity would give Apple an infusion of AI expertise, a recognized model within the AI house and a shopper product. A deal might additionally doubtlessly help with future recruiting efforts.”
Whereas the report says Apple has held a number of conferences with Perplexity in latest months, and its inner AI groups have been evaluating the expertise intently, Apple declined to remark, and Perplexity mentioned it has “no information of any present or future M&A discussions”.
The case for purchasing Perplexity
First, there’s the looming risk of Apple’s $20 billion-a-year search take care of Google being unwound following the US authorities’s ongoing antitrust case. Eddy Cue himself hinted at this throughout his testimony earlier this yr, as he claimed that the trade is pivoting away from conventional internet search towards AI-driven solutions.
Second, Perplexity already has what Apple lacks: a consumer-facing AI search product with real-time internet entry and identify recognition within the AI house, at a a lot decrease (though nonetheless astronomical) worth than direct rivals like, say, OpenAI. Perplexity even has its personal iPhone assistant that, regardless of the system’s intentional limitations, does manner higher than Siri and ChatGPT at a number of duties.
Which possibly is why past a full-blown acquisition, Apple can be mentioned to be exploring a possible partnership, one that would see Perplexity built-in into Safari as a search possibility or baked into Siri responses.
One massive wrinkle: Samsung. The report says Samsung is near finalizing its personal main partnership with Perplexity, which might make any unique Apple deal extra sophisticated. It’s value mentioning that Bloomberg reported earlier at present that Meta has additionally held acquisition discussions with Perplexity, though it appears to have given up on the concept and moved on to its latest $14B funding in Scale AI as a substitute.
Do you assume Apple should purchase Perplexity? If not them, who do you assume Apple ought to purchase? Tell us within the feedback.
FTC: We use earnings incomes auto affiliate hyperlinks. Extra.
