Apple is said to have been in talks about the possible acquisition of AI companies Mistral AI and Perplexity.
This was reported by The Information, based on sources within the company. Eddy Cue, who is responsible for the services division, is said to be a particularly strong advocate of such a deal. Other top executives, including software chief Craig Federighi, are said to favor developing Apple’s own AI technology in-house.
Mistral AI is a French startup founded in 2023 that works on so-called open-weight language models. These models are smaller, faster, and easier to implement than many competing systems, but still deliver strong performance on complex tasks such as programming and reasoning. The company profiles itself as a European alternative to American players such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
Perplexity is based in the United States and is building a search and answer service that combines AI models with real-time web indexing. The technology provides conversation-oriented answers with source references and aims to offer an alternative to Google.
Acquiring one of these companies would cost Apple billions of dollars. Historically, the company rarely makes such large purchases. Examples include Beats ($3 billion) and Intel’s modem division ($1 billion). If the $20 billion agreement with Alphabet, which makes Google the default search engine on Apple devices, is overturned in the US courts, an investment in an AI search company could still become necessary. It is striking that it is Perplexity that is now attempting to acquire Google Chrome for $34.5 billion.
Apple wants to invest more
At the same time, CEO Tim Cook indicated at the end of July during the presentation of the quarterly figures that Apple is prepared to invest more to catch up in artificial intelligence. According to him, this can be achieved by building additional data centers or by acquiring a larger player in the sector. Competitors such as Google and Microsoft currently spend tens of billions of dollars annually on AI and infrastructure, while Apple has so far pursued a cautious strategy and relied in part on external data centers. Although the company has already acquired seven smaller startups this year, Cook said he is also open to larger acquisitions if they can accelerate Apple’s AI plans.