Apple should acquire Perplexity AI to boost AI strategy, says Wedbush
Investing.com — Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) should acquire Perplexity AI Inc. to strengthen its artificial intelligence offerings, according to Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, who called the potential acquisition a “no brainer.”
Ives highlighted that major tech companies including Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Meta (NASDAQ:META), OpenAI, and Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) are engaged in an “arms race” to monetize AI, which he described as “the biggest tech trend in the last 50 years.”
Meanwhile, Apple appears to be falling behind in this technological revolution despite having “the biggest and most entrenched consumer installed base in the world with 2.4 billion iOS devices and 1.5 billion iPhones,” Ives noted.
The analyst pointed to Apple’s disappointing internal efforts to develop Apple Intelligence and the lack of significant AI announcements at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which he said “massively disappointed investors and most importantly developers.”
Ives suggested that Apple’s traditional approach of developing technology internally may no longer be sufficient in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. “The time has come Apple needs to acquire Perplexity to significantly boost its AI platform,” he wrote.
Perplexity, an AI search engine currently valued at approximately $14 billion, could “redefine Apple’s AI strategy and would fit in very well with Siri,” according to Ives. He estimated that Apple might need to pay around $30 billion for the acquisition, which he described as “a drop in the bucket relative to the monetization opportunity.”
The analyst also noted that such a move could help Apple address both offensive and defensive strategies related to the ongoing Google search trial.
Apple’s largest acquisition to date was its $3 billion purchase of Beats in 2014.
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