[jsnell]

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 would solve nothing. They'd need to bring a couple of hundred billion to the table; and then we're back to this being just embarrassing, because obviously the money isn't there.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.

[jsnell]

I know. That's why I wrote "value of TikTok". Not market cap of ByteDance.

And to get a controlling share of the merged entity, you'd need to be bring hundreds of billions of value to the merger, not a clownshoes AI startup.

[fakedang]

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

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.