7 ms·

Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

117 points by ipster_io 2y ago

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
[flagged]
- voisin 2y ago
  > one massive privacy invading democracy undermining psyop Sounds like Meta.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    To an extent, I agree. I think TikTok is far more insidious. If you look at the agreements US based workers had to sign, to uphold goals of the Chinese government, the injection of state sponsored bias into their product seems pretty explicit. With Meta there have been both private censorship decisions (due to the bias of the company’s own executive and employees) as well as pressure from the US government (see Biden administration back channels to request censorship). But even so, I don’t think these are comparable in magnitude and extent.
- delusional 2y ago
  I understand the argument that TikTok is credibly more exposed to demands from the CCP than American Social media. I'm not entirely convinced it's happening to an alarming degree, some collaboration with governments seem inevitable, but I'm also not unconvinced. I don't see how that in any way leads into an argument of "If China agrees to open up its market to foreign social media, without censorship, then we can consider TikTok existing." That sounds way more like a national capitalist argument than one for national security.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - dudus 2y ago
    Congress has "supposedly" seen the evidence, but is confidential. But more than that they seem to be acting in something that can happen more than in something that has happened already
- Vervious 2y ago
  tit for tat makes the U.S. more like the CCP, and less like the version of the U.S. that stands for freedom and democracy (that I presume you want to live in). if you want to live in an American version of china where instead of bytedance we have zuckagram, go for it. Chinese social media has vastly out-innovated American platforms and the Zuck/Musk response is to ban the competition rather than write a proper law regulating social media platforms
- ipster_io 2y ago
  There is absolutely no difference between TikTok, Meta, Google et al.
- Yoric 2y ago
  At this stage, I don't care whether TikTok, Meta or X is controlled by/controls a nation. They're just harmful.
paxys 2y ago
What a circus
vinni2 2y ago
Perplexity sounds desperate. They got early traction and have money but they seem to be lost.
- minimaxir 2y ago
  Less desperate, more "there is a point where we needed to stop and we have clearly passed it but let's keep going and see what happens."
  - nextworddev 2y ago
    Playing with house money for the founders
  - sdesol 2y ago
    I think it is more of, holy shit, OpenAI is entering this space, and maybe Anthropic as well. What can we compete with: - Name? No - Technology? No because we rely on other LLMs Do we have anything? No. We've taken in a lot of money from big-name investors, so let's see if we can turn ourselves into a complementary asset before people realize that LLMs are nowhere near what they are sold as.
- vaseem 2y ago
  AI needs user data, user generated content and behavior patterns. Google has platforms Google also purchased Reddit user content. Meta had platforms and user content.
- ecshafer 2y ago
  They would be buying one of the largest amounts of user generated data in the world. Sounds good to train on.
  - what 2y ago
    Is there anything of value in TikTok videos?
    - deleted 2y ago
chvid 2y ago
Deeply unserious (like the rest of the TikTok saga) and TikTok even at a depressed price is worth far more than perplexity.
xnx 2y ago
Disappointing that any real site is promoting this marketing stunt
ilaksh 2y ago
Aravind Srinivas is very ambitious but also smart of course. TikTok has got to be an absolute gold mine for AI video training because of its short duration format and the amount of videos. And AI videos seem primed to absolutely explode in popularity and consumption. I don't have access to Veo 2 yet, but Kling 1.6 is pretty amazing, even if it's prompt understanding is a bit random. I wonder what the TikTok terms of use say about this. I am probably just a hopeless conspiracy theorist, but I wonder if this just comes down to the NSA getting full access to the code and operations for auditing purposes or if they decide they have their own agenda. I know that propaganda is a real thing, not a made up conspiracy theory, and companies like TikTok and Perplexity could be key to spreading/controlling it. In particular, it's difficult to run a war if almost everyone in your country is against it. Which might happen pretty quickly if the wrong video spreads. Maybe the solution to avoiding WWIII is for the (evil?) military industrial complex bosses in the west and China to get together and realize that they can more effectively surveil and control their populations if they work together. And then they can sell their weapons for purposes of persecuting smaller nations or groups that get out of line. And use the combined power of the monopoly information distribution companies in both countries to propagandize the world. There you go, I just solved world peace. You're welcome.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  I see the demand for being able to produce content with 0 effort, but where is the demand to consume it coming from? I thought people watch tiktoks to interact with people, the desire to engage with nonhuman personalities must be extremely niche, but could be I’m in a millennial/luddite bubble.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ilaksh 2y ago
    That's a good point but there is also a lot more passive consumption than actual interaction. Also, AI video's IQ is generally pretty low now, but it still has the capacity to create very tailored experiences, such as with AI influencers automatically responding to every single comment from any viewer that donates X dollars. The are limitations to the digital avatars and video generation etc., but they are already very engaging. And in the next 1-3 years they will get much better. Where we are headed in possibly 2-5 years is the expectation for many people that the personalities, activities, videos in general are completely customized for them or for the communities they are in. And change immediately based on their whims (or constrained by more realistic humanlike reactions if desired). LTX video can be fine-tuned to produce a consistent character and runs at realtime frame rates. It is a tiny 2b model and it's understanding of prompts and the world is garbage because of that, but hardware and models keep getting much much better.
0xCAP 2y ago
Perplexity at this point like that single uncle shooting his shot with anything breathing.
- Beijinger 2y ago
  And why is that? P is the only AI company that I am constantly using. It is as important to me as google.
  - tantalor 2y ago
    n=1
dkobia 2y ago
Perplexity is a pretty awesome and much needed app, but Aravind Srinivas has many posts on X reek of a desperate need to succeed - scruples aside. To me that signals an inevitable enshitification.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  After the non-exodus from Reddit and Twitter enshittification is a given, in time. It's been proven not to sink a business.
  - alangibson 2y ago
    This. We now have proof positive that network effects are stronger than it repulsion at hostile changes. On that note, Facebook going all in on AI slop is brilliant. Most users will stay at the trough for ever increasing lengths of time.
  - ineedaj0b 2y ago
    twitter is fantastic man. it's great. i do miss hearing from (liberal) people who for whatever reason can't stomach people not agreeing with them. i hope they come around. like why does steven king care? i like his books, just talk about the books/his life. i never cared about his politics either way. if you can't separate your life from politics ughhh he's supposed to be smart. sad so many smart liberal people act like all the people i grew up with in church.
kissgyorgy 2y ago
It's a shame because Perplexity is BY FAR the most useful AI tool out there. This shows they have clearly no vision and won't be able to keep afloat.
- keyle 2y ago
  Please explain why do you think they're the most useful by far? Just curious of such a bold statement in a highly competitive space.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    Not OP but it used to be that if you wanted an LLM that would cite its sources - Perplexity was one of the only games in town that did a really good job combining an LLM with an active search engine. It was also much better for posing questions that required the most up-to-date knowledge.
    - hshshshshsh 2y ago
      Why do you sound like a bot.
      - jazzyjackson 2y ago
        Probably because bots are trained to sound like people.
  - Xmd5a 2y ago
    Search is the most if not only useful application of LLMs. In this space there is also Phind. It seems I use Perplexity as often as Google nowadays.
  - kissgyorgy 2y ago
    It starts with a search and reasoning from there. Cites the sources in the middle of the sentences so you can just click and verify, see the whole context. It blows every "model only" service because it's 100x more accurate. I use it instead of Google for every search now.
niedzielski 2y ago
they just acquired read.cv: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/17/perplexity-acquires-read-cv-a-social-media-platform-for-professionals/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/17/perplexity-acquires-read-c....
woadwarrior01 2y ago
The great lengths people go to for PR. :)
handfuloflight 2y ago
Obvious PR move, they don't have near enough money.
- xp84 2y ago
  Kmart bought Sears (back when Sears was far from worthless, and Kmart was fresh off a chapter 11) with nothing but its own overvalued stock, which was based on an inflated valuation of its real estate from a couple of very favorable sales. Point being, don’t rule out financial shenanigans if people who know what they’re doing are involved. (Note: I know nothing about who runs Perplexity)
- thatguymike 2y ago
  They’re suggesting a merger, not a sale.
  - jsnell 2y ago
    That doesn't really help here. TikTok is at an absolute minimum an order of magnitude more valuable than Perplexity, more likely two orders of magnitude. If ownership of NewCo was even roughly proportional to the market value each side is bringing, the ownership structure doesn't meaningfully change compared to TikTok. And when the ownership structure is the problem, it's obvious that this deal structured as a merger would solve nothing. They'd need to bring a couple of hundred billion to the table; and then we're back to this being just embarrassing, because obviously the money isn't there.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > TikTok is at an absolute minimum an order of magnitude more valuable than Perplexity, more likely two orders of magnitude They don't need to buy TikTok, they need to buy out Bytedance. If I had to structure it, I'd have Bytedance spin out TikTook to its U.S. shareholders and then arrange for Perplexity to buy enough of Bytedance's share that Bytedance holds a 49% (non-voting) interest.
      - 2y ago
babelfish 2y ago
Google has YouTube. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
asdev 2y ago
Perplexity is going to be a nice headstone in the AI graveyard once the bubble pops
- alephnerd 2y ago
  I disagree. The same way ByteDance has strong relationship with public and private partners in China, it's the same with Perplexity among Indian organizations based on personal experience. Worst case, they pull an Ola
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    Bytedance is a Chinese company. Perplexity is an American company
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      Ik. And Aravind has been fairly vocal about India, and is drastically expanding their lobbying and growth team in India as we speak. Tbf, a lot of it is probably because of the IITM "mafia" - they have an amazing alumni network and are fairly close.
quantadev 2y ago
To me this just shows that Perplexity is definitely being controlled by some other force other than AI developers, and different from what they publicly would admit to. Perhaps the US Gov't is involved? ...because I don't think any other investors would be able to hide their true funding source and motives quite like the Gov't.
- khimaros 2y ago
  i see what you did there
  - quantadev 2y ago
    thanks. Be sure to like and subscribe.
fgblanch 2y ago
I don't know if it would come with the deal, but Bytedance web crawler is known to be the one with top number of requests per day among AI crawlers (src: https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-block-ai-bots-scrapers-and-crawlers-with-a-single-click/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-blo... ) I guess one of Perplexity challenges is to have their own web index and of course that starts with having a powerful crawler. Also having a powerful crawler is useful for capturing tokens to train models. If that technology comes with the deal, it makes perfect sense for Perplexity to acquire them.
- matt_daemon 2y ago
  Funnily enough the Cloudflare blog identifies Perplexity engaging in dodgy practices to avoid robots.txt denylists: > Sadly, we’ve observed bot operators attempt to appear as though they are a real browser by using a spoofed user agent. We’ve monitored this activity over time, and we’re proud to say that our global machine learning model has always recognized this activity as a bot, even when operators lie about their user agent. Clearly not working too well.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    Lol, I had to report Facebook using the documented Facebook crawler UA, coming from Facebook ASN as a bot to them because they misclassified it. Don't expect too much from their global machine. I wonder if this case also included people manually reporting it...
yogthos 2y ago
I'm not sure why people keep expecting ByteDance to actually sell TikTok. The US isn't even that big of a market for them in global terms. India was a bigger market for them, and it was way bigger than the US. They're just going to shut down in US and focus on BRICS countries instead.
- kumarm 2y ago
  Not all users are the same for Ad Revenue.
  - yogthos 2y ago
    That's true, but the sheer volume of users outside the US more than makes up for that.
    - mmiyer 2y ago
      I don't know about that - seems like US is close to half of Tiktok revenue: "TikTok took in an estimated $10 billion in revenue in the United States last year, he said, out of a total global revenue estimated at $20 billion to $26 billion." [1] 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/technology/tiktok-ban-bytedance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/technology/tiktok-ban-byt...
      - yogthos 2y ago
        US market isn't likely to grow much going forward though, while developing countries have a lot of growth potential. Meanwhile, TikTok is bringing in at least 10bln annually already. Pure profit isn't the only thing that makes it valuable though, it's one of the few global media platforms that's not owned by the US.
ulfw 2y ago
Perplexity does everything to get some PR, no matter how stupid and unrealistic. This seems very desperate and raises some at least orange flags.
rvz 2y ago
A new low for Perplexity AI and will do anything for attention.
ripped_britches 2y ago
My cousin also submitted a bid to merge with TikTok, not sure why that’s not being reported on?!?
- sdesol 2y ago
  Did your cousin raise $500 million? If not, that might be it. He needs big time investors to get his bid on the media radar.
  - janderson215 2y ago
    I tried to buy a Ferrari F550 but the salesman kicked me out when I offered him $300. $500M is nothing to sneeze at, but that is like 3 orders of magnitude less than TikTok’s value.
    - benreesman 2y ago
      I don’t doubt TikTok is wildly valuable. Is it really that high? I know tech valuations at this point basically price in compulsory use of their products, but that’s pretty stiff even by contemporary standards right? Top hit [1] says $200 billion, which is little more believable, but unlike Meta, TikTok has real competition across its entire surface, Meta can leverage its other monopolies and I’m not sure TikTok will be the first social network ever to avoid being encircled, outlasted, and strangled by Menlo Park. [1] https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-buyers-divestment-ban-8429dfb422c4cefb6b0807aeb2c5cd56# https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-buyers-divestment-ban-8429...
      - sdesol 2y ago
        > I don’t doubt TikTok is wildly valuable. Is it really that high? I think TikTok is currently in the too valuable to measure state. It can literally be used (and some say it has already been used) to drastically influence politics in other countries. The revenue generated is literally nothing at this stage in my opinion. China would be more than happy to spend billions at a loss if it means it can keep the same reach.
m3kw9 2y ago
They not selling till trump do something or nothing
23B1 2y ago
It would actually be brilliant of the CCP to further entwine itself with Musk via acquisition. I think it goes without saying that the man is an opportunist and a globalist in populist clothing. (Fwiw I like that he owns Twitter now if for nothing more than the schadenfreude)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Yawrehto 2y ago
There are different types of merge. There's the 'look at it! It just makes sense!' type. There's the 'we wanted to do this thing but you're already doing it' merge. There's the 'let's be a monopoly!' merge, and its sibling, 'you are getting in the way of my aspirations to be a monopoly' merge. There's the quiet merge to deal with debts, the making-it-formal-but-functionally-we-were-already-merged, the hey-that-collaboration-went-well merge, and many more. And then there's this merge.
- startup-student 2y ago
  lol what a great way to describe it
- saturn8601 2y ago
  I am still holding out hope for the Drumstick-TikTok Merger. We need more humor these days and i'd really love to see someone like Drumstick take it over lol [1]:https://www.instagram.com/drumstick/reel/DE07qPUywUg https://www.instagram.com/drumstick/reel/DE07qPUywUg
- cyanydeez 2y ago
  The 'we need training data' merge?
  - Yawrehto 2y ago
    Oh yes, how did I forget about that?
- maeil 2y ago
  The "incredible free PR for almost no effort or money" pretend-merge. Suddenly tens of millions of people are hearing about Perplexity who hadn't heard of it so far.
  - luckman212 2y ago
    My dad (80 years old) just called yesterday to tell me about this cool new app he found- Perplexity. So I guess the PR is working...
joshdavham 2y ago
I could imagine a future where this leads to Google losing more of their monopoly. Google has search and video (via Youtube), but Perplexity has their search and potentially video through tiktok.
m3kw9 2y ago
Is this like a Hail Mary pass?
afinlayson 2y ago
This has calling out favorite celebrity saying "Fine I'll marry you" when they don't know who you energy ...
consumer451 2y ago
The world is a joke.[!] Nihilism seems so appealing these days. Please, someone walk me through the concept of hope in 2025. [!] Updated TikTok message: https://bsky.app/profile/gloomchen.bsky.social/post/3lg2xe4td6c25 https://bsky.app/profile/gloomchen.bsky.social/post/3lg2xe4t...
siruncledrew 2y ago
Well, they at least achieved some free PR for these shenanigans. Probably their best outcome.

117 points by ipster_io 2y ago

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

[flagged]

voisin 2y ago
> one massive privacy invading democracy undermining psyop Sounds like Meta.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  To an extent, I agree. I think TikTok is far more insidious. If you look at the agreements US based workers had to sign, to uphold goals of the Chinese government, the injection of state sponsored bias into their product seems pretty explicit. With Meta there have been both private censorship decisions (due to the bias of the company’s own executive and employees) as well as pressure from the US government (see Biden administration back channels to request censorship). But even so, I don’t think these are comparable in magnitude and extent.
delusional 2y ago
I understand the argument that TikTok is credibly more exposed to demands from the CCP than American Social media. I'm not entirely convinced it's happening to an alarming degree, some collaboration with governments seem inevitable, but I'm also not unconvinced. I don't see how that in any way leads into an argument of "If China agrees to open up its market to foreign social media, without censorship, then we can consider TikTok existing." That sounds way more like a national capitalist argument than one for national security.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dudus 2y ago
  Congress has "supposedly" seen the evidence, but is confidential. But more than that they seem to be acting in something that can happen more than in something that has happened already
Vervious 2y ago
tit for tat makes the U.S. more like the CCP, and less like the version of the U.S. that stands for freedom and democracy (that I presume you want to live in). if you want to live in an American version of china where instead of bytedance we have zuckagram, go for it. Chinese social media has vastly out-innovated American platforms and the Zuck/Musk response is to ban the competition rather than write a proper law regulating social media platforms
ipster_io 2y ago
There is absolutely no difference between TikTok, Meta, Google et al.
Yoric 2y ago
At this stage, I don't care whether TikTok, Meta or X is controlled by/controls a nation. They're just harmful.

paxys 2y ago

What a circus

vinni2 2y ago

Perplexity sounds desperate. They got early traction and have money but they seem to be lost.

minimaxir 2y ago
Less desperate, more "there is a point where we needed to stop and we have clearly passed it but let's keep going and see what happens."
- nextworddev 2y ago
  Playing with house money for the founders
- sdesol 2y ago
  I think it is more of, holy shit, OpenAI is entering this space, and maybe Anthropic as well. What can we compete with: - Name? No - Technology? No because we rely on other LLMs Do we have anything? No. We've taken in a lot of money from big-name investors, so let's see if we can turn ourselves into a complementary asset before people realize that LLMs are nowhere near what they are sold as.
vaseem 2y ago
AI needs user data, user generated content and behavior patterns. Google has platforms Google also purchased Reddit user content. Meta had platforms and user content.
ecshafer 2y ago
They would be buying one of the largest amounts of user generated data in the world. Sounds good to train on.
- what 2y ago
  Is there anything of value in TikTok videos?
  - deleted 2y ago

chvid 2y ago

Deeply unserious (like the rest of the TikTok saga) and TikTok even at a depressed price is worth far more than perplexity.

xnx 2y ago

Disappointing that any real site is promoting this marketing stunt

ilaksh 2y ago

Aravind Srinivas is very ambitious but also smart of course. TikTok has got to be an absolute gold mine for AI video training because of its short duration format and the amount of videos. And AI videos seem primed to absolutely explode in popularity and consumption. I don't have access to Veo 2 yet, but Kling 1.6 is pretty amazing, even if it's prompt understanding is a bit random. I wonder what the TikTok terms of use say about this. I am probably just a hopeless conspiracy theorist, but I wonder if this just comes down to the NSA getting full access to the code and operations for auditing purposes or if they decide they have their own agenda. I know that propaganda is a real thing, not a made up conspiracy theory, and companies like TikTok and Perplexity could be key to spreading/controlling it. In particular, it's difficult to run a war if almost everyone in your country is against it. Which might happen pretty quickly if the wrong video spreads. Maybe the solution to avoiding WWIII is for the (evil?) military industrial complex bosses in the west and China to get together and realize that they can more effectively surveil and control their populations if they work together. And then they can sell their weapons for purposes of persecuting smaller nations or groups that get out of line. And use the combined power of the monopoly information distribution companies in both countries to propagandize the world. There you go, I just solved world peace. You're welcome.

jazzyjackson 2y ago
I see the demand for being able to produce content with 0 effort, but where is the demand to consume it coming from? I thought people watch tiktoks to interact with people, the desire to engage with nonhuman personalities must be extremely niche, but could be I’m in a millennial/luddite bubble.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ilaksh 2y ago
  That's a good point but there is also a lot more passive consumption than actual interaction. Also, AI video's IQ is generally pretty low now, but it still has the capacity to create very tailored experiences, such as with AI influencers automatically responding to every single comment from any viewer that donates X dollars. The are limitations to the digital avatars and video generation etc., but they are already very engaging. And in the next 1-3 years they will get much better. Where we are headed in possibly 2-5 years is the expectation for many people that the personalities, activities, videos in general are completely customized for them or for the communities they are in. And change immediately based on their whims (or constrained by more realistic humanlike reactions if desired). LTX video can be fine-tuned to produce a consistent character and runs at realtime frame rates. It is a tiny 2b model and it's understanding of prompts and the world is garbage because of that, but hardware and models keep getting much much better.

0xCAP 2y ago

Perplexity at this point like that single uncle shooting his shot with anything breathing.

Beijinger 2y ago
And why is that? P is the only AI company that I am constantly using. It is as important to me as google.
- tantalor 2y ago
  n=1

dkobia 2y ago

Perplexity is a pretty awesome and much needed app, but Aravind Srinivas has many posts on X reek of a desperate need to succeed - scruples aside. To me that signals an inevitable enshitification.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
After the non-exodus from Reddit and Twitter enshittification is a given, in time. It's been proven not to sink a business.
- alangibson 2y ago
  This. We now have proof positive that network effects are stronger than it repulsion at hostile changes. On that note, Facebook going all in on AI slop is brilliant. Most users will stay at the trough for ever increasing lengths of time.
- ineedaj0b 2y ago
  twitter is fantastic man. it's great. i do miss hearing from (liberal) people who for whatever reason can't stomach people not agreeing with them. i hope they come around. like why does steven king care? i like his books, just talk about the books/his life. i never cared about his politics either way. if you can't separate your life from politics ughhh he's supposed to be smart. sad so many smart liberal people act like all the people i grew up with in church.

kissgyorgy 2y ago

It's a shame because Perplexity is BY FAR the most useful AI tool out there. This shows they have clearly no vision and won't be able to keep afloat.

keyle 2y ago
Please explain why do you think they're the most useful by far? Just curious of such a bold statement in a highly competitive space.
- vunderba 2y ago
  Not OP but it used to be that if you wanted an LLM that would cite its sources - Perplexity was one of the only games in town that did a really good job combining an LLM with an active search engine. It was also much better for posing questions that required the most up-to-date knowledge.
  - hshshshshsh 2y ago
    Why do you sound like a bot.
    - jazzyjackson 2y ago
      Probably because bots are trained to sound like people.
- Xmd5a 2y ago
  Search is the most if not only useful application of LLMs. In this space there is also Phind. It seems I use Perplexity as often as Google nowadays.
- kissgyorgy 2y ago
  It starts with a search and reasoning from there. Cites the sources in the middle of the sentences so you can just click and verify, see the whole context. It blows every "model only" service because it's 100x more accurate. I use it instead of Google for every search now.

niedzielski 2y ago

they just acquired read.cv: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/17/perplexity-acquires-read-cv-a-social-media-platform-for-professionals/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/17/perplexity-acquires-read-c....

woadwarrior01 2y ago

The great lengths people go to for PR. :)

handfuloflight 2y ago

Obvious PR move, they don't have near enough money.

xp84 2y ago
Kmart bought Sears (back when Sears was far from worthless, and Kmart was fresh off a chapter 11) with nothing but its own overvalued stock, which was based on an inflated valuation of its real estate from a couple of very favorable sales. Point being, don’t rule out financial shenanigans if people who know what they’re doing are involved. (Note: I know nothing about who runs Perplexity)
thatguymike 2y ago
They’re suggesting a merger, not a sale.
- jsnell 2y ago
  That doesn't really help here. TikTok is at an absolute minimum an order of magnitude more valuable than Perplexity, more likely two orders of magnitude. If ownership of NewCo was even roughly proportional to the market value each side is bringing, the ownership structure doesn't meaningfully change compared to TikTok. And when the ownership structure is the problem, it's obvious that this deal structured as a merger would solve nothing. They'd need to bring a couple of hundred billion to the table; and then we're back to this being just embarrassing, because obviously the money isn't there.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > TikTok is at an absolute minimum an order of magnitude more valuable than Perplexity, more likely two orders of magnitude They don't need to buy TikTok, they need to buy out Bytedance. If I had to structure it, I'd have Bytedance spin out TikTook to its U.S. shareholders and then arrange for Perplexity to buy enough of Bytedance's share that Bytedance holds a 49% (non-voting) interest.
    - 2y ago

babelfish 2y ago

Google has YouTube. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

asdev 2y ago

Perplexity is going to be a nice headstone in the AI graveyard once the bubble pops

alephnerd 2y ago
I disagree. The same way ByteDance has strong relationship with public and private partners in China, it's the same with Perplexity among Indian organizations based on personal experience. Worst case, they pull an Ola
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Bytedance is a Chinese company. Perplexity is an American company
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Ik. And Aravind has been fairly vocal about India, and is drastically expanding their lobbying and growth team in India as we speak. Tbf, a lot of it is probably because of the IITM "mafia" - they have an amazing alumni network and are fairly close.

quantadev 2y ago

To me this just shows that Perplexity is definitely being controlled by some other force other than AI developers, and different from what they publicly would admit to. Perhaps the US Gov't is involved? ...because I don't think any other investors would be able to hide their true funding source and motives quite like the Gov't.

khimaros 2y ago
i see what you did there
- quantadev 2y ago
  thanks. Be sure to like and subscribe.

fgblanch 2y ago

I don't know if it would come with the deal, but Bytedance web crawler is known to be the one with top number of requests per day among AI crawlers (src: https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-block-ai-bots-scrapers-and-crawlers-with-a-single-click/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-blo... ) I guess one of Perplexity challenges is to have their own web index and of course that starts with having a powerful crawler. Also having a powerful crawler is useful for capturing tokens to train models. If that technology comes with the deal, it makes perfect sense for Perplexity to acquire them.

matt_daemon 2y ago
Funnily enough the Cloudflare blog identifies Perplexity engaging in dodgy practices to avoid robots.txt denylists: > Sadly, we’ve observed bot operators attempt to appear as though they are a real browser by using a spoofed user agent. We’ve monitored this activity over time, and we’re proud to say that our global machine learning model has always recognized this activity as a bot, even when operators lie about their user agent. Clearly not working too well.
- viraptor 2y ago
  Lol, I had to report Facebook using the documented Facebook crawler UA, coming from Facebook ASN as a bot to them because they misclassified it. Don't expect too much from their global machine. I wonder if this case also included people manually reporting it...

yogthos 2y ago

I'm not sure why people keep expecting ByteDance to actually sell TikTok. The US isn't even that big of a market for them in global terms. India was a bigger market for them, and it was way bigger than the US. They're just going to shut down in US and focus on BRICS countries instead.

kumarm 2y ago
Not all users are the same for Ad Revenue.
- yogthos 2y ago
  That's true, but the sheer volume of users outside the US more than makes up for that.
  - mmiyer 2y ago
    I don't know about that - seems like US is close to half of Tiktok revenue: "TikTok took in an estimated $10 billion in revenue in the United States last year, he said, out of a total global revenue estimated at $20 billion to $26 billion." [1] 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/technology/tiktok-ban-bytedance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/technology/tiktok-ban-byt...
    - yogthos 2y ago
      US market isn't likely to grow much going forward though, while developing countries have a lot of growth potential. Meanwhile, TikTok is bringing in at least 10bln annually already. Pure profit isn't the only thing that makes it valuable though, it's one of the few global media platforms that's not owned by the US.

ulfw 2y ago

Perplexity does everything to get some PR, no matter how stupid and unrealistic. This seems very desperate and raises some at least orange flags.

rvz 2y ago

A new low for Perplexity AI and will do anything for attention.

ripped_britches 2y ago

My cousin also submitted a bid to merge with TikTok, not sure why that’s not being reported on?!?

sdesol 2y ago
Did your cousin raise $500 million? If not, that might be it. He needs big time investors to get his bid on the media radar.
- janderson215 2y ago
  I tried to buy a Ferrari F550 but the salesman kicked me out when I offered him $300. $500M is nothing to sneeze at, but that is like 3 orders of magnitude less than TikTok’s value.
  - benreesman 2y ago
    I don’t doubt TikTok is wildly valuable. Is it really that high? I know tech valuations at this point basically price in compulsory use of their products, but that’s pretty stiff even by contemporary standards right? Top hit [1] says $200 billion, which is little more believable, but unlike Meta, TikTok has real competition across its entire surface, Meta can leverage its other monopolies and I’m not sure TikTok will be the first social network ever to avoid being encircled, outlasted, and strangled by Menlo Park. [1] https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-buyers-divestment-ban-8429dfb422c4cefb6b0807aeb2c5cd56# https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-buyers-divestment-ban-8429...
    - sdesol 2y ago
      > I don’t doubt TikTok is wildly valuable. Is it really that high? I think TikTok is currently in the too valuable to measure state. It can literally be used (and some say it has already been used) to drastically influence politics in other countries. The revenue generated is literally nothing at this stage in my opinion. China would be more than happy to spend billions at a loss if it means it can keep the same reach.

m3kw9 2y ago

They not selling till trump do something or nothing

23B1 2y ago

It would actually be brilliant of the CCP to further entwine itself with Musk via acquisition. I think it goes without saying that the man is an opportunist and a globalist in populist clothing. (Fwiw I like that he owns Twitter now if for nothing more than the schadenfreude)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Yawrehto 2y ago

There are different types of merge. There's the 'look at it! It just makes sense!' type. There's the 'we wanted to do this thing but you're already doing it' merge. There's the 'let's be a monopoly!' merge, and its sibling, 'you are getting in the way of my aspirations to be a monopoly' merge. There's the quiet merge to deal with debts, the making-it-formal-but-functionally-we-were-already-merged, the hey-that-collaboration-went-well merge, and many more. And then there's this merge.

startup-student 2y ago
lol what a great way to describe it
saturn8601 2y ago
I am still holding out hope for the Drumstick-TikTok Merger. We need more humor these days and i'd really love to see someone like Drumstick take it over lol [1]:https://www.instagram.com/drumstick/reel/DE07qPUywUg https://www.instagram.com/drumstick/reel/DE07qPUywUg
cyanydeez 2y ago
The 'we need training data' merge?
- Yawrehto 2y ago
  Oh yes, how did I forget about that?
maeil 2y ago
The "incredible free PR for almost no effort or money" pretend-merge. Suddenly tens of millions of people are hearing about Perplexity who hadn't heard of it so far.
- luckman212 2y ago
  My dad (80 years old) just called yesterday to tell me about this cool new app he found- Perplexity. So I guess the PR is working...

joshdavham 2y ago

I could imagine a future where this leads to Google losing more of their monopoly. Google has search and video (via Youtube), but Perplexity has their search and potentially video through tiktok.

m3kw9 2y ago

Is this like a Hail Mary pass?

afinlayson 2y ago

This has calling out favorite celebrity saying "Fine I'll marry you" when they don't know who you energy ...

consumer451 2y ago

The world is a joke.[!] Nihilism seems so appealing these days. Please, someone walk me through the concept of hope in 2025. [!] Updated TikTok message: https://bsky.app/profile/gloomchen.bsky.social/post/3lg2xe4td6c25 https://bsky.app/profile/gloomchen.bsky.social/post/3lg2xe4t...

siruncledrew 2y ago

Well, they at least achieved some free PR for these shenanigans. Probably their best outcome.