M.G. Siegler • #perplexity • Jun 3, 2025

A Samsung Deal Makes An Apple One More Complex for Perplexity

But it still makes a ton of sense for the AI company, obviously...

Perplexity has long been one of the AI players in a unique, but slightly awkward position. They've had a solid product in what is shaping up to be a compelling spot in the market, but they lacked the giant Big Tech benefactor that their larger AI rivals had. Yes, they have a lot of nice, big investors – including NVIDIA and SoftBank – but not the one that could truly buoy them, like Anthropic has in Amazon (and Google) or OpenAI has (had?) in Microsoft. That may be about to change:

Samsung is nearing a wide-ranging deal to invest in Perplexity and put search technology from the artificial intelligence startup at the forefront of the South Korean company’s devices.

The two companies are in talks to preload Perplexity’s app and assistant on upcoming Samsung devices and integrate the startup’s search features into the Samsung web browser, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The firms have also discussed weaving Perplexity’s technology into Samsung’s Bixby virtual assistant, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

Granted, Samsung isn't one of the "Magnificent 7" these days (nor are they an American company, of course). But they are a $275B tech giant that controls a sizable portion of the Android market. So yeah, they're probably a good partner to have here.

Especially if it's as all-encompassing as this suggests. It's not just the preload on Samsung devices, it's also the integration into their web browser – which presumably could replace (or at least give an option to replace) you-know-who.

Samsung is planning to announce the Perplexity integrations as early as this year, the people said, with the goal of including the service as a default assistant option in the Galaxy S26 phone line that’s slated to launch in the first half of 2026. However, the specific details haven’t been finalized and could still change.

Being both baked into Bixby and perhaps getting their own placement as the default assistant option on Galaxy phones reminds me a bit of how Amazon leverages Anthropic's technology – and of course, how Microsoft leverages OpenAI's. They're using them both up top and underneath. As for the money:

The tech giant is also expected to be one of the biggest investors in a new round of funding for Perplexity, the people said. The startup is in advanced discussions to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation, Bloomberg News has reported.

In the olden days – so, a couple years ago – raising $500M would have seemed like a ungodly – or actually, godly – amount of money. Today, it's a seed round for an AI startup. And a small seed round, depending on if you're Elon Musk or not. It's just not a lot of money and firepower to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and yes, xAI – let alone you-know-who. Obviously, you'd hope that Perplexity is far more cash efficient given that they leverage the models from many of those competitors to power their products (which could be an issue down the road?). But they also do have their own "Sonar" proprietary models that they train (distilling from Meta's "open source" Llama models and more recently, DeepSeek).

They're also just doing a lot. When they're not busy trying to buy TikTok – what ever happened to that? – or Chrome – they're making AI web browsers, and potentially AI hardware. None of this comes on the cheap.

Still, without question, a Samsung tie-up would be huge for them. In fact, I can only think of one better one for the company, and this deal, if completed, may make that decidedly more awkward:

Apple has also shown interest in working with Perplexity. The iPhone maker has discussed using Perplexity as an alternative to Google Search as well as a substitute for ChatGPT integration in the Siri voice assistant, Bloomberg News has reported.

“We’ve been pretty impressed with what Perplexity has done, so we’ve started some discussions with them about what they’re doing,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, said during recent testimony at a Google antitrust trial.

It’s unclear how Perplexity’s relationship with Samsung, one of Apple’s fiercest rivals, would affect that.

I've been arguing for months that acquiring Perplexity should be Apple's AI "Hail Mary". Though with more time passing, and their valuation rising, that's been looking less and less likely. And this Samsung deal may very well kill off that possibility. But would it also hurt a potential partnership between the two? This feels like one of those golden fork-in-the-road moments for Perplexity...