Apple May Make a $14 Billion Acquisition to Boost AI
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During last year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled “AI for the rest of us” — a new set of features dubbed Apple Intelligence. However, it’s not a big secret that things haven’t been going swimmingly well for Apple in delivering on everything it’s promised.
While a series of iOS 18 point releases brought us most of what Apple showed off, from Writing Tools and summaries to Genmoji and Image Playground, most of these weren’t particularly revolutionary. Apple’s take on them was fresh, and the tight integration was nice, but the core tools had been done before.
The one game-changing feature Apple promised, a more personalized Siri, remains missing over a year later. While company executives made it clear at this year’s WWDC that they’re still working on it, they also candidly admitted that we shouldn’t expect to see anything before early 2026, at least a year later than it was supposed to be delivered.
Meanwhile, much of the real power behind Apple Intelligence has already seemingly been ceded to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Existing iOS 18 features like Visual Intelligence and more complex Siri requests already rely on the third-party chatbot, and the major enhancements to Image Playground this year are several new styles that are entirely backed by ChatGPT. Apple brings privacy and a more seamless experience into the mix, but ultimately, it’s OpenAI’s servers doing all the heavy lifting.
Apple is already late to the game, and now it’s falling even further behind rivals like Google, which already delivered a conversational chatbot in Android 15 last year. Last year, the most optimistic predictions suggested that Apple might have Siri ready to handle this sort of thing by early 2026, but recent obstacles in improving Siri have pushed that more fully functional version back to at least 2027.
So, it’s probably not surprising that Apple is considering looking to bring in some heavier artillery. According to a recent report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple executives have been in preliminary talks about making a bid to fully acquire artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI.
Adrian Perica, the company’s head of mergers and acquisitions, has weighed the idea with services chief Eddy Cue and top AI decision-makers, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The discussions are at an early stage and may not lead to an offer, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.
Mark Gurman
Such a deal would give Apple access to Perplexity’s AI talent and existing technology stack, but it would also be the largest acquisition in the company’s history, eclipsing its $3 billion purchase of Beats ten years ago by an order of magnitude.
Perplexity is currently valued at $14 billion based on its last investment round. That suggests the price Apple would pay is at least in that ballpark, plus or minus a couple of billion dollars (but what’s a few billion between friends?)
However, Apple’s interest in Perplexity may be further-reaching than merely improving Apple Intelligence as we know it today. Gurman believes that the deal would also help Apple develop an AI-based search engine that could help offset the loss of its lucrative search deal with Google.
While rumors of Apple building a search engine have been circulating for well over a decade, most analysts and pundits have generally agreed that it’s not in Apple’s best interests to do so. There are many reasons for this, including the lack of interest in targeted advertising or any strong competency in that area.
Still, the biggest reason is the most obvious one: Google pays Apple at least $20 billion annually to be the default search engine on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It’s far easier for Apple to let someone else do the work and reap the rewards than try to reinvent the wheel.
Apple’s interest in search could change if that deal goes away, and there’s a good chance it will with the US Department of Justice levying antitrust sanctions against Google.
While Apple’s discussions about an outright acquisition remain internal and have yet to be brought up with Perplexity’s management, the two companies have reportedly met several times in recent months, suggesting that the two companies might simply team up to integrate Perplexity AI into Safari web search and Siri. It’s unclear if this would be a deeper integration than other search engines and AI extensions like ChatGPT.
Apple might be leaning more toward a full acquisition to secure more exclusive rights to Perplexity AI. The company already has a deal with Samsung in the works for a deep partnership in future Galaxy smartphones, and the last thing Apple wants to do is follow Samsung’s lead.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
