A few days ago, it was reported that Samsung is close to reaching a deal to invest in AI firm Perplexity. The company could make Perplexity the default AI assistant on the Galaxy S26 and other mobile devices. Now, it is being reported that even Apple and Meta were interested in buying Perplexity, which is one of the most famous AI firms globally.

Apple and Meta joined the race to buy AI firm Perplexity. The firm was co-founded by Andy Konwinski, Arvind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, and Johnny Ho. Arvind Srinivas held research positions in top AI firms DeepMind, Google Brain, and OpenAI.

A report from TheVerge claims that Mark Zuckerberg recently discussed buying ex-OpenAI CEO Mira Murati's Thinking Machine Labs and Arvind Srinivas' Perplexity. However, according to a Bloomberg report, none of the discussions reached a formal offer stage for various reasons, including differences in their strategy and valuation.

While Meta is now reportedly making Safe Superintelligence (SSI) co-founder Daniel Gross and ex-Github CEO Nat Friedman co-leads for the Meta AI assistant, who will report to ex-Scale CEO Alexandr Wang, Apple is reportedly still in discussions to acquire Perplexity, which could help it make an AI-powered search engine and that would help it reduce its reliance on Google. The Bloomberg report says the deal might not materialize, which is a good outcome for Samsung.

Samsung is said to be interested in investing in Perplexity so that it can bring improvements to AI features on Galaxy phones and tablets. While the company is currently using a combination of Bixby and Google's Gemini for AI-powered features, like Apple, it might want to reduce its reliance on Google. It the deal goes through, the company could announce it as soon as this year.

If Apple and Meta are interested in Perplexity, it means the AI firm's product is good. And Samsung might have chosen the right firm to invest in. The South Korean firm has already started offering Perplexity Pro for free to Galaxy smartphone users in the USA. This points to a possible wide-ranging deal with the AI firm, and we could hear about it officially in the coming months.