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Apple Inc. executives have reportedly held internal talks about a potential bid to acquire AI startup Perplexity. The discussions are in early stages and have not involved Perplexity’s management. Adrian Perica, Apple’s head of mergers and acquisitions, reportedly raised the idea with services chief Eddy Cue and top artificial intelligence decision-makers at the company. Bloomberg reports that the tech giant plans to integrate AI-driven search tools, like those offered by Perplexity, into its Safari browser.  Perplexity acquisition could be the largest-ever  Perplexity recently closed a funding round that valued it at $14 billion. A deal approaching that value would be Apple’s largest acquisition to date, surpassing its $3 billion purchase of Beats Electronics in 2014. The company also made billion-dollar deals with Intel’s modem unit and Chinese ride-hailing platform DiDi. Bloomberg reported Friday that Meta Platforms had earlier tried to acquire Perplexity but failed to secure a deal. After that failed attempt, Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion to build a “superintelligence” AI team. Scale co-founder Alexandr Wang is now part of that initiative. Meta has reportedly been in advanced talks to hire Daniel Gross, co-founder of Safe Superintelligence Inc., while Apple is making efforts to persuade him to join its team.  Gross had previously sold his startup, Cue, to Apple in 2013, which contributed foundational technologies for early AI features in iOS. His Cue co-founder, Robby Walker, oversaw Siri until recently and now leads Apple’s internal AI project codenamed “Knowledge,” meant to compete with ChatGPT, and created using web-based data. Apple could go the partnership route While a full acquisition is on the table, Apple has also discussed a possible partnership with Perplexity. According to sources, one proposed arrangement would involve incorporating Perplexity as an AI search engine option in Safari. Another would integrate…

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Filed under: News - @ June 21, 2025 6:23 am