AI-search start-up Perplexity AI has made an unsolicited $34.5 billion cash offer for Alphabet’s Chrome browser, according to a letter of intent sent on 12 August. The three-year-old firm said it would keep Chromium open source, invest $3 billion in the product over two years and preserve Chrome’s current default search settings. The bid lands as U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta weighs remedies in the Justice Department’s antitrust case that last year found Google held an unlawful monopoly in online search. Government lawyers have asked the court to consider forcing a divestiture of Chrome, a ruling Google has said it will appeal. Alphabet has not put the browser up for sale and has yet to comment on Perplexity’s approach. Perplexity, which has raised roughly $1 billion and was last valued at about $18 billion, did not specify how it would fund a deal more than twice its market worth, but said several venture funds had offered to finance the purchase in full. Analysts at Baird Equity Research called the offer “not serious,” while others have estimated Chrome could command at least $50 billion if a court-ordered sale materialises. Reuters reported that OpenAI, Yahoo and Apollo Global Management have also expressed interest in Chrome, underscoring how control of the world’s most-used browser—and its billions of daily user journeys—has become a strategic prize in the race to commercialise AI-powered search.