AI search startup Perplexity has offered to purchase Google’s Chrome web browser for $52.7 billion ($US34.5 billion), ahead of a landmark antitrust outcome which threatens to force Google into making a sale.

The offer – which nearly doubles Perplexity’s own estimated valuation of $27.5 billion (US$18 billion) – comes a year after a US federal judge ruled Google was a search engine “monopolist”.

The US Department of Justice soon after pushed for Google to sell off Chrome and, among other measures, license its vast search data to competitors.

With US District Judge Amit Mehta expected to make a decision this month, Perplexity has reportedly put forth a moonshot $52.7 billion ($US34.5 billion) bid for the browser.

In a Tuesday letter to chief executive of Google parent Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, Perplexity said its offer was “designed to satisfy an antitrust remedy in highest public interest by placing Chrome with a capable, independent operator.”

Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, the AI company explained several investors, including large venture-capital funds, agreed to back the bid.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI also expressed interest in buying Chrome in April, though Google has not demonstrated any intent to sell.

Earlier this year, Pichai said in testimony that a forced sale would harm Google’s business and discourage it from investing in research and development, while vice president for regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, argued breakneck innovations from AI competitors, including Perplexity, were already driving immense competition.

Notably, this isn’t the first headline-making offer from Perplexity.

In January, the startup submitted a bid to merge with TikTok US after the social media app was told to find a US buyer or face a nationwide ban.

Much rides on antitrust case

Chrome boasts roughly 3.5 billion users and, according to web analytics platform Statcounter, a near 68 per cent share of the global browser market.

More than the world’s most popular web browser, Chrome also serves as a gateway to Google’s market-dominant search engine thanks to its pre-installation arrangements with most Android devices.

For competing products such as Perplexity’s web-searching AI platform, breaking into the mainstream could largely depend on the results of Google’s case, Kok-Leong Ong, professor of business analytics at RMIT University explained.

“Google understands the value of the browser and how it would be a part of its AI strategy,” Ong said.

“Until we have clarity on the outcome of the anti-trust case against Google, the state of play is unlikely to change much.”

If a sale does proceed, Perplexity has also risked lowballing its bid: estimations vary wildly, but rival search engine DuckDuckGo's chief executive Gabriel Weinberg recently suggested Chrome could be worth around $76.3 billion (US$50 billion).

Perplexity has meanwhile launched its own web browser, Comet, under an early paid model last month.

Comet utilises Perplexity AI as its primary search engine and can be delegated tasks such as sending emails or putting together shopping lists, while the browser itself is built on the Google-backed open-source project Chromium.

Perplexity reportedly told Pichai it would maintain and support Chromium as part of the proposed acquisition.

Alex Moore, executive director of not-for-profit digital rights group Open Web Advocacy, told Information Age he had concerns about whether Perplexity “would have both the means and the incentive to continue funding Chromium”, which itself powers Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera and numerous smaller browsers.

‘No world’ where Google sells

The offer also represented a marked backflip from Perplexity’s former position on Google’s antitrust case.

In April this year, Perplexity chief executive and co-founder Aravind Srinivas wrote “Google should not be broken up” and “Chrome should remain within and continue to be run by Google”.

“We don't believe anyone else can run a browser at that scale without a hit on quality,” he said.

Now that Perplexity has contradicted its former stance, Moore told Information Age the “most obvious motivation” for its offer was simple user acquisition.

“Perplexity reportedly has fewer than 3 million daily users, compared to Chrome’s 3.45 billion,” he said.

“Even capturing a small percentage of that user base through this acquisition would represent a massive boost, something they could show to investors.”

Speaking anonymously with Information Age, however, a prominent US chief executive said the offer was a “publicity stunt” which didn’t deserve to be dignified with coverage.

“There’s no world in which Google would sell Chrome to Perplexity at any price,” they said.

Perplexity did not respond prior to publication when asked if Google expressed interest in its offer.