Apple Inc. has held internal discussions about acquiring French start-up Mistral AI and U.S. search company Perplexity AI as it seeks to accelerate its artificial-intelligence roadmap, according to a report by The Information cited by several industry outlets on Tuesday. Mistral, best known for lightweight large language models, is valued at roughly $10 billion, while Perplexity, whose AI-powered search engine relies on third-party models such as GPT and Claude, is estimated to be worth $14 billion to $18 billion. A purchase of either firm would dwarf Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats in 2014 and mark a rare move into big-ticket deals for the Cupertino-based company. The discussions remain preliminary and face internal resistance, the report said. Eddy Cue, who oversees Apple’s services business, is described as the leading advocate for a deal, whereas software chief Craig Federighi prefers building AI capabilities in-house. Apple’s calculus is further complicated by a pending court decision that could disrupt its multibillion-dollar agreement to keep Google as the default search engine on the iPhone.