(Bloomberg/Julia Love) — AI startup Perplexity said it made a formal offer to acquire Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion, in anticipation of requirements that may be imposed on the search giant in antitrust proceedings.

The unsolicited bid was sent to Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Tuesday morning, a Perplexity spokesperson said. It comes not long after rival artificial intelligence startup OpenAI also expressed interest in acquiring Chrome, which together with the open-source Chromium software is the main way people access the web on PCs.

After a federal judge found last year that Google has an illegal monopoly in internet search, the US government has said it wants Google to sell the Chrome browser and license search data to competitors, among other proposed changes. US District Judg

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