Apple has recently held internal talks over the possibility of acquiring two well-established AI companies, namely US-based Perplexity and Nvidia-backed French startup Mistral, The Information reported citing people familiar with the matter.
Perplexity stands out as one of the biggest AI firms that does not yet have backing from a major big tech player. Even so, the company has attracted big-name investors like Nvidia and Jeff Bezos, though the size of their investments has not been publicly disclosed. Despite not being tied to big tech, Perplexity has quickly become one of the most talked-about AI products in the technology space.
Controversies around Perplexity
While Perplexity is rising in popularity, it has also faced serious criticism. Several leading publishers have accused the company of bypassing paywalls and plagiarising content.
Even after these controversies, the AI company’s growth has been impressive and it is currently valued at over $18 billion, as per a Bloomberg report.
Tim Cook’s shift in strategy
Last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook indicated that the company is now more open to making larger AI-related acquisitions to speed up its AI development roadmap. This marks a significant change from Apple’s usually conservative approach to mergers and acquisitions, where it has typically focused on smaller deals, according to a Reuters report.
Cook revealed that Apple has already purchased seven smaller companies this year from different industries, with the company averaging about one acquisition every few weeks. Apple’s last big-ticket deal was more than a decade ago in 2014, when it bought Beats Electronics for $3 billion.
French startup Mistral, which also counts Nvidia as a backer, has been growing rapidly. The company was valued at over $6 billion after its Series B funding round last year. More recently, the Financial Times reported that Mistral has been in talks to raise another $1 billion at a valuation of $10 billion, showing strong investor interest in the company’s AI models.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg News reported that Apple executives had already discussed the possibility of making a bid for Perplexity, which is backed by both Nvidia and Jeff Bezos. This adds weight to the recent report suggesting Apple’s growing interest in acquiring the company.
How Perplexity could help Apple?
If Apple manages to acquire Perplexity, the deal could have a major impact on its AI ecosystem. Integrating Perplexity’s generative AI technology into Apple products could significantly improve Siri and Spotlight, giving them much better natural-language understanding and more accurate contextual search capabilities. This would help Apple compete more directly with Google and Microsoft, both of whom are aggressively embedding advanced AI into their platforms.
At this point, Reuters said it could not independently confirm The Information’s report. None of the three companies – Apple, Mistral or Perplexity have responded to requests for comment.
