Still, this offer for Chrome is far more than Perplexity has raised from investors and more than the startup’s current valuation. Perplexity has raised about $1.5 billion to date, Pitchbook estimates, including an extension round of $100 million raised last month that valued it at $18 billion, Bloomberg reported.

The AI search startup looks less like an acquirer and more like a company to be acquired, but its CEO understands that optics matter.

In an unlikely bid that shows the growing brashness of young artificial intelligence companies, the AI startup Perplexity has made an unsolicited offer to buy Google’s Chrome web browser for $34.5 billion.