Perplexity AI makes a bid to merge with TikTok U.S. [Video]

Perplexity AI officially made a play for TikTok on Saturday, submitting a bid to its parent company, ByteDance, to create a new merged entity combining Perplexity, TikTok U.S. and new capital partners, CNBC has learned.

The new structure would allow for most of ByteDance’s existing investors to retain their equity stakes and would bring more video to Perplexity, according to a source familiar with the situation, who asked to remain anonymous due to the confidential nature of the potential deal.

Perplexity AI, the artificial intelligence search engine startup competing with OpenAI and Google, started 2024 with a roughly $500 million valuation and ended the year with a valuation of about $9 billion, after attracting increasing investor interest amid the generative AI boom — as well as controversy over plagiarism accusations.

AI-assisted search has been viewed by investors as one of Google’skey risks, as it potentially changes the way consumers access information online. Last year, OpenAI, which started the …