Aravind Srinivas’s Insane Bid to Own Google Chrome Has Everyone Talking
In a move that caught everyone off guard, Perplexity AI – a startup barely three years old, has made a jaw-dropping offer to buy Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion. Aravind Srinivas, the CEO and co-founder of Perplexity AI, is suddenly at the center of one of the biggest tech stories of the year. Srinivas and his young AI company shocked the world by offering an eye-popping $34.5 billion to buy Google’s Chrome browser—a product that’s been one of Google’s most valuable assets for years.
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What makes this offer so surprising isn’t just the eye-popping number, which is more than double Perplexity’s own $14 billion valuation, but also that Chrome is one of Google’s crown jewels, with over three billion users worldwide.
Aravind Srinivas, originally from Chennai and educated at IIT Madras and UC Berkeley, has built Perplexity AI into a company that’s already worth $14 billion in just three years. Srinivas’s background includes working with top AI researcher Yoshua Bengio and time at Google itself, giving him unique insights into the tech giant’s operations.
The timing of this bold bid is no accident. Google is currently facing legal challenges in the U.S. after a judge ruled that the company illegally maintained its search monopoly by paying billions to stay the default search option on many devices and browsers. While Google plans to appeal—and the process could drag on for years—one possible outcome might force them to sell parts of their business, including Chrome.
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