Perplexity bids $34.5B for Chrome browser

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Perplexity just submitted a stunning $34.5 billion cash bid to acquire Google's Chrome browser as antitrust pressure mounts.

Could regulatory enforcement be reshaping Big Tech faster than anyone expected?

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In today's recap:

• Perplexity offers $34.5B for Google Chrome

• Skywork releases game-changing open-source world model

• OpenAI backs brain chip startup to challenge Musk's Neuralink

• Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1 million tokens of context on the API

PERPLEXITY

Perplexity offers $34.5B for Chrome amid Google breakup push

Recaply: Following DOJ demands that Google sell Chrome due to antitrust violations, AI startup Perplexity just submitted a $34.5 billion cash bid to acquire the world's dominant web browser.

Key notes:

• DOJ proposed Chrome sale after court ruled Google illegally monopolized search.

• Judge expected to issue remedy ruling this month in ongoing antitrust case.

• Perplexity's offer includes $3 billion investment in open-source development.

• DuckDuckGo CEO previously estimated Chrome worth over $50 billion.

• Google maintains it won't sell and will appeal through lengthy court process.

• Multiple funding sources backing Perplexity's bid despite company's smaller size.

Impact: The offer highlights how regulatory pressure is reshaping Big Tech. Even if Google successfully appeals, the case shows how antitrust enforcement could redistribute power in the browser and search markets.

SKYWORK

Open-source Matrix-Game 2.0 challenges closed AI models

Recaply: Skywork AI counters DeepMind's proprietary Genie 3 with Matrix-Game 2.0, an open-source interactive world model that matches real-time performance while allowing full community access to the underlying technology.

Key notes:

• First open-source model to achieve 25 FPS real-time interactive video.

• Minutes-long sequences with consistent physics and visual quality.

• Complete codebase and model weights available to researchers and developers.

• Autoregressive diffusion architecture optimized for interactive scenarios.

• Multi-environment support including urban, natural, and game settings.

• KV-Cache system enables unlimited video length on consumer hardware.

Impact: By open-sourcing this technology, Skywork democratizes access to cutting-edge AI capabilities previously locked behind corporate walls. This could accelerate innovation in gaming, robotics, and virtual world creation across the broader developer community.

OPENAI & MUSK

OpenAI backs brain chip startup to challenge Musk

Recaply: OpenAI is preparing to invest in Merge Labs, a brain-computer interface company that will compete directly with Elon Musk's Neuralink, further intensifying the rivalry between Sam Altman and his former co-founder.

Key notes:

• $850M startup valuation with $250M funding round led by OpenAI.

• Sam Altman co-founding alongside World's Alex Blania.

• Targets brain-to-computer connections similar to Neuralink's approach.

• Leverages recent AI breakthroughs for practical brain implant applications.

• Adds to Altman's portfolio including nuclear and digital ID ventures.

• Musk's Neuralink currently valued at $9B after recent funding.

Impact: The brain-computer interface market is heating up with major tech leaders now backing competing solutions. This rivalry could drive rapid innovation in neural implant technology, potentially bringing sci-fi concepts like thought-controlled devices closer to mainstream reality.

NEWS

📰 What’s matters in AI right now?

• Anthropic expanded Claude Sonnet 4 to support 1 million tokens of context on the API, a 5x increase allowing processing of over 75,000 lines of code in one request.

• Mistral AI launched Mistral Medium 3.1 with improved performance, better tone, and smarter web search capabilities now available in Le Chat and via API.

• Anthropic countered OpenAI by offering Claude models to all three U.S. government branches (executive, legislative, judiciary) for $1 per year per agency.

• Google Research and DeepMind introduced g-AMIE, a diagnostic AI system based on Gemini 2.0 Flash that provides medical summaries for physician review.

• Liquid AI released LFM2-VL vision-language models delivering 2x faster GPU inference and low-latency performance optimized for edge devices and smartphones.

• Lifecycle AI launched Sheet0, a Level 4 data agent spreadsheet that automates data extraction and analysis, backed by $5M in funding.

• Jan AI unveiled Jan-v1, a 4B parameter open-source web search model achieving 91% SimpleQA accuracy as an alternative to Perplexity Pro.

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