Still, this offer for Chrome is far more than Perplexity has raised from investors and more than the startup’s current valuation. Perplexity has raised about $1.5 billion to date, Pitchbook estimates, including an extension round of $100 million raised last month that valued it at $18 billion, Bloomberg reported.

Tuesday’s disclosure that Perplexity wants to buy Chrome may be intended to influence a federal judge more than Google/Alphabet. Either way, it’s getting a lot of attention, which might have been Perplexity’s primary goal.

Perplexity made an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Google's web browser and claims it has the backing to pull it off.