The $14 Billion AI Google Killer

A new darling of AI makes waves in the Silicon Valley. This is called perplexity, and according to relationships, Meta and Apple have quietly explored to acquire it. Assessed at an amazing turnover following a financing cycle in May, the startup is praised as a revolutionary threat to the domination of the search for Google Search.

But here is the thing: it especially sums up the web results and sends you links.

So why the frenzy?

The perplexity was invoiced an “response engine”. You ask a question, and he uses large language models to spit a summary with human consonance, with footnote notes. It is essentially a question of chatting with a bibliography. You could ask for the best books on the French Revolution or a rupture of the law on genius. In a few seconds, he generates a paragraph with links to Wikipedia, media or Reddit threads.

His land is a cleaner research experience, without advertising and chatted. No SEO waste, no scrolling.

But criticisms say that it is hardly more than a glorified packaging around orogle and Openai APIs, with minimum owner technology and a lot of smoke. It’s fast, clean and smooth. But, they support, basically, it is above all a question of reorganizing the Internet.

Obsession with great technology

This did not stop the media threw. In May 2025, the company based in San Francisco, California, closed another financing cycle of $ 500 million, bringing its evaluation to $ 14 billion, a strong increase compared to its valuation of $ 9 billion in December 2024. Jeff Bezos, via the Jeff Bezos family fund, and Nvidia are among its notable backers

And now the technology giants are running. According to Bloomberg, Apple had discussions on the acquisition of perplexity. Meta would also have considered this decision, although no official offer was confirmed.

The logic is clear. Perplexity is rapidly growing and increasingly considered a “Google killer”, especially among technological influencers and Power users. Traffic to its site has exploded in recent months. The company now offers a chrome extension, a mobile application and a pro version which gives users access to higher level AI models like GPT-4 and Claude.

However, we do not know what exactly makes perplexity worth 14 billion dollarsApart from the fact that he is setting up the wave of AI.

Why the skeptics of AI roll their eyes

For AI skeptics, the ascent of perplexity is another example of the substance media. The site does not form its own models. It does not build new infrastructure. This does not revolutionize research. He offers only a polite interface to ask questions and obtain summaries generated by the aa-tired public websites.

There are also growing concerns about how perplexity gets its information. A certain number of press organizations, including the New York Times, Forbes and Wired, have accused the company of plagiarism and scratching the content without authorization or awarded. Journalists and publishers warn that this type of research experience fueled by AI threatens to cannibalize news trafficking while giving little content creators.

On June 20, the BBC became the last point of sale to threaten legal action against AI perplexity, alleging that the company uses the content of the BBC to form its “default AI model”, according to the Financial Times.

The CEO of Perplexity, Aravind Srinivas, defended the company as an “information aggregator”. In July 2024, the startup spear An income sharing program to tackle the backlash. “We have always believed that we can build a system where the whole Internet wins,” said Srinivas at the time.

So why the gold rush?

Simple. Research is money. Google gained $ 50.7 billion in research advertisements in the first quarter, an increase of 9.8% from one year to the next. If perplexity can even convince a small part of users to change, then monetize this experience, it becomes a real threat. Apple and Meta, both increasingly suspicious of counting on Google, consider perplexity as a fast way in the AI ​​research race.

But the issues go even further. Whoever controls the following search interface controls the user. Just as Google has replaced Yahoo, perplexity could theoretically replace Google. This is why Big Tech wants, even if it is not entirely clear what they buy.