Apple and Meta both interested in buying Perplexity AI: Report

According to claims made by some news publications, tech giants Apple and Meta might be interested in acquiring leading AI startup Perplexity AI.

Perplexity AI up for sale?

However, Perplexity has not made any official announcement if it is up for sale. No reports are confirming that Meta or Apple has held formal talks to acquire the company. Bloomberg first reported that Meta approached the San Francisco–based Perplexity about a potential takeover before the company recently invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI. 

According to another Bloomberg report, Arvind Srinivas-led AI startup is also on Apple’s radar.

The industry buzz suggests Meta and Apple are considering buying the startup to strengthen their AI tools.

Apple’s AI ecosystem is in a critical stage because of the Siri delays till 2026, and its overall AI tools failing to lead the market.

Meanwhile, Amazon and Nvidia-backed Perplexity has launched an AI-powered search engine, a voice assistant that even allows users to generate AI videos using text prompts. 

Perplexity delivers more conversational and informative responses while citing sources, unlike traditional search engines.

Users can type queries and receive concise, source-backed answers, along with suggestions for related topics. Also, the startup is building tools similar to ChatGPT and Gemini, drawing attention from Meta and Apple.

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About Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI was founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Andy Konwinski, Denis Yarats, and Johnny Ho in San Francisco.

The startup, once founded to "democratise access to knowledge”, is now valued at $18 billion.

Its greatest strength lies in allowing users to choose from a range of powerful large language models (LLMs), though it also has its own LLM called Sonar. The ability to quickly develop and launch new features on top of popular LLMs is what helped the startup gain its user base and rise in popularity.

As of mid-2024, it reportedly had around 15 million users. Turning into a serious search engine contender, many consider Perplexity AI a potential challenger to Google.

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