Perplexity's $34B bid for Chrome

PLUS: Secret US chip trackers, OpenAI's disappointing GPT-5, and an AI civil war inside Meta

Author

Jelani Abdus-Salaam
August 13, 2025

In partnership with

Welcome back, AI’ers!

Here’s What’s On The Menu For Today

  • Perplexity's $34B bid for Chrome

  • The US's secret AI chip trackers

  • OpenAI’s disappointing GPT-5 launch

  • An AI civil war erupts inside Meta

AI ON MY MIND

Happy Wednesday,

AI search startup Perplexity is making a bold play for Google's territory, tabling an unsolicited offer of over $34 billion to acquire the Chrome browser. The bid arrives at a strategic moment, landing just after a judge ruled Google has an illegal monopoly and opened the door for a court-ordered breakup.

While many analysts are calling the move a publicity stunt that drastically undervalues the browser, the audacious offer thrusts Perplexity directly into the spotlight.

By the way, I've been getting questions about how AI works in practice, so I'm launching a separate newsletter that dives deeper into real business applications and practical advice. [Click here if you're interested].

-Jelani Fuel (Co-founder of Best of AI)

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TODAY’S TOP STORIES

Perplexity's $34B Chrome Gamble

The Recap: AI search startup Perplexity made a stunning offer of $34.5 billion to acquire Google Chrome. The unsolicited bid arrives just as Google faces a potential court-ordered breakup of its search and advertising business.

Unpacked:

  • The timing is no coincidence, as the bid directly follows a U.S. judge's ruling that Google has an illegal monopoly, opening the door for a potential court-ordered breakup that could force a sale of Chrome.

  • Many industry investors and analysts believe the offer is a publicity stunt that vastly undervalues the browser, with some estimating Chrome's actual worth at over $100 billion.

  • Perplexity's proposal states it would keep Google as the default search engine and continue supporting the open-source Chromium project, which underpins browsers like Microsoft Edge and Opera.

Bottom line: This audacious bid is likely less about an actual acquisition and more about capitalizing on Google's legal vulnerabilities to generate massive exposure. It's a strategic play that thrusts Perplexity into the spotlight as a serious challenger in the battle for the future of search.

The Chip War's Secret Trackers

The Recap: In a major escalation of the tech conflict, the U.S. is secretly embedding location trackers in advanced AI chip shipments to stop illegal diversions to China. This covert tactic reveals the lengths Washington will go to enforce its export controls.

Unpacked:

  • The trackers are reportedly hidden inside the packaging of servers from manufacturers like Dell and Super Micro, with some devices being as large as a smartphone.

  • This is not a blanket policy; authorities target select shipments under investigation, with agencies like the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations involved.

  • Smugglers are already adapting to the tactic, with resellers in China now actively inspecting shipments to find and remove the tracking devices.

Bottom line: This move shifts the U.S. strategy from pure policy to active, physical supply chain surveillance. The tactic raises the stakes for hardware companies and will likely accelerate China's efforts to create its own independent chip ecosystem.

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Relevance is my favorite AI tool right now (even more so than N8N).

Here’s why:

It’s an AI agent building tool that doesn’t require you to build out the logic using nodes. Instead, you use natural language to build out these agents. But the best thing imo is that you can build AI Agent teams.

Like agents talking to each other completing a goal until its done. It’s nuts. No other tool on the market is doing this. You have to check it out.

(Try it out →Link)

👾 AI Tools We Use Everyday

➡️ N8N for AI Agents - Literally use this everyday to write this newsletter (link)

➡️ Axiom AI - AI Browser automation to scrape anything on the web (link)

➡️ GummySearch - AI Reddit research (link)

Tools are sourced from our database and are not sponsored or affiliated.

MORE STORIES

OpenAI's GPT-5 Disappoints

The Recap: The much-anticipated launch of OpenAI's GPT-5 is facing widespread criticism for failing to deliver a significant leap in intelligence. Despite being hyped as a 'PhD-level expert,' the model shows many of the same basic flaws as its predecessors, prompting a shift in focus toward its role in a new era of work.

Unpacked:

  • CEO Sam Altman framed GPT-5 as a 'PhD-level expert' on any topic, but users quickly found it making basic errors, like creating an inaccurate map of the United States.

  • The rushed release may be tied to intense investor pressure, as OpenAI prepares for a pre-IPO stock sale that could value the company at $500 billion.

  • OpenAI is doubling down on the enterprise market, now serving over 5 million paid users on its business tiers and positioning GPT-5 to automate high-stakes organizational work.

Bottom line: This fumbled launch signals OpenAI's strategy is now centered on enterprise adoption and monetization rather than delivering on its AGI promises. It also clarifies that even a flawed product can still advance workplace automation and capture a massive user base.

The AI Civil War at Meta

The Recap: Meta is aggressively building a new 'superintelligence' team with massive pay packages, but the strategy is reportedly backfiring by alienating its existing AI talent and causing an internal rift.

Unpacked:

  • The massive compensation gap, with some new hires getting eye-popping offers, is making some current researchers feel undervalued and that their past work was considered a failure.

  • This internal friction is creating opportunities for rivals, with notable researchers leaving for Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI hiring more than a dozen former Meta employees.

  • A former Meta director summed up the fallout with a viral video of a monkey getting angry over unequal rewards, highlighting the perceived unfairness of the company's new talent strategy.

Bottom line: This internal turmoil shows that building a top-tier AI team requires more than just deep pockets; it also demands maintaining morale and a cohesive culture. If Meta can't balance its new ambitions with the loyalty of its existing experts, it risks fueling the very competitors it's trying to beat.

OTHER NEWS YOU MAY LIKE

Reddit blocked the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine from archiving most of its content, a move aimed at preventing its user-generated data from being scraped to train AI models.

Anthropic updated its Claude Sonnet 4 model to support a one million token context window, allowing it to process and analyze massive documents or entire codebases in a single prompt.

OpenAI backed brain-computer interface startup Merge Labs, a new competitor to Elon Musk's Neuralink that also counts CEO Sam Altman as a co-founder.

AI cracked a decades-old pure mathematics puzzle using reinforcement learning, a breakthrough that could help forecast complex systems like market crashes or disease outbreaks.

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Until next time, stay safe.

-Best of AI Team

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