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Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

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Re: Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

#91

Post by Yawrehto »

There are different types of merge.

There's the 'look at it! It just makes sense!' type. There's the 'we wanted to do this thing but you're already doing it' merge. There's the 'let's be a monopoly!' merge, and its sibling, 'you are getting in the way of my aspirations to be a monopoly' merge. There's the quiet merge to deal with debts, the making-it-formal-but-functionally-we-were-already-merged, the hey-that-collaboration-went-well merge, and many more.

And then there's this merge.

Re: Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

#92

Post by jazzyjackson »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #88
vunderba wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but it used to be that if you wanted an LLM that would cite its sources - Perplexity was one of the only games in town that did a really good job combining an LLM with an active search engine. It was also much better for posing questions that required the most up-to-date knowledge.

Why do you sound like a bot.

Probably because bots are trained to sound like people.

Re: Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

#93

Post by gruez »

mcmcmc wrote: post #48
kissgyorgy wrote: post #20

It's a shame because Perplexity is BY FAR the most useful AI tool out there. This shows they have clearly no vision and won't be able to keep afloat.

Perplexity are also flagrant copyright violators

More than every other AI company?

Re: Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

#94

Post by fakedang »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65
jsnell wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really help here. TikTok is at an absolute minimum an order of magnitude more valuable than Perplexity, more likely two orders of magnitude. If ownership of NewCo was even roughly proportional to the market value each side is bringing, the ownership structure doesn't meaningfully change compared to TikTok. And when the ownership structure is the problem, it's obvious that this deal structured as a merger…

> TikTok is at an absolute minimum an order of magnitude more valuable than Perplexity, more likely two orders of magnitude They don't need to buy TikTok, they need to buy out Bytedance. If I had to structure it, I'd have Bytedance spin out TikTook to its U.S. shareholders and then arrange for Perplexity to buy enough of Bytedance's share that Bytedance holds a 49% (non-voting) interest.

Bytedance without TikTok is still an order of magnitude worth more than Perplexity.

Re: Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

#95

Post by benreesman »

janderson215 wrote: post #90
sdesol wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your cousin raise $500 million? If not, that might be it. He needs big time investors to get his bid on the media radar.

I tried to buy a Ferrari F550 but the salesman kicked me out when I offered him $300. $500M is nothing to sneeze at, but that is like 3 orders of magnitude less than TikTok’s value.

I don’t doubt TikTok is wildly valuable. Is it really that high? I know tech valuations at this point basically price in compulsory use of their products, but that’s pretty stiff even by contemporary standards right?

Top hit [1] says $200 billion, which is little more believable, but unlike Meta, TikTok has real competition across its entire surface, Meta can leverage its other monopolies and I’m not sure TikTok will be the first social network ever to avoid being encircled, outlasted, and strangled by Menlo Park.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-buyers-divestment-ban-8429...

Re: Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

#97

Post by benreesman »

squarefoot wrote: post #68
JoshuaDavid wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using the term "value" to refer to monetary value, yes. If you're using it to refer to some other kind of value, it probably isn't relevant to the viability of the proposed merge.

I guess the PP question was like "what real world problems could solve an AI trained on TikTok videos?". Sociology research, maybe.

The training data is an absurd moat for a mega social network, that’s why you save everything forever: the machine learning architecture to exploit it hasn’t even been invented yet and you have longitudinal dissensions all but impossible to get otherwise.

Voice, video, sentiment, ads stuff. With today’s technology you know if a user is about to get cheated on before they do.

Re: Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

#98

Post by sdesol »

benreesman wrote: post #95
janderson215 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to buy a Ferrari F550 but the salesman kicked me out when I offered him $300. $500M is nothing to sneeze at, but that is like 3 orders of magnitude less than TikTok’s value.

I don’t doubt TikTok is wildly valuable. Is it really that high? I know tech valuations at this point basically price in compulsory use of their products, but that’s pretty stiff even by contemporary standards right? Top hit [1] says $200 billion, which is little more believable, but unlike Meta, TikTok has real competition across its entire surface, Meta can leverage its other monopolies and I’m not sure TikTok will…

> I don’t doubt TikTok is wildly valuable. Is it really that high?

I think TikTok is currently in the too valuable to measure state. It can literally be used (and some say it has already been used) to drastically influence politics in other countries.

The revenue generated is literally nothing at this stage in my opinion. China would be more than happy to spend billions at a loss if it means it can keep the same reach.

Re: Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok

#100

Post by JumpCrisscross »

fakedang wrote: post #94
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TikTok is at an absolute minimum an order of magnitude more valuable than Perplexity, more likely two orders of magnitude They don't need to buy TikTok, they need to buy out Bytedance. If I had to structure it, I'd have Bytedance spin out TikTook to its U.S. shareholders and then arrange for Perplexity to buy enough of Bytedance's share that Bytedance holds a 49% (non-voting) interest.

Bytedance without TikTok is still an order of magnitude worth more than Perplexity.

> Bytedance without TikTok is still an order of magnitude worth more than Perplexity

They’re not buying Bytedance - TikTok, they’d be buying half of the piece of TikTok Bytedance would own after spinning it out to its non-Chinese shareholders.

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