AI startup Perplexity has renewed its interest in acquiring TikTok ahead of the April 5 ByteDance divestiture deadline, proposing to open source the platform's 'For You' feed algorithm. Despite Perplexity's current $18 billion valuation falling significantly short of TikTok's estimated $50 billion price tag, the company argues it's uniquely positioned to rebuild TikTok's algorithm without creating a monopoly. The startup plans to integrate its citation system with TikTok videos and combine its answer engine with TikTok's video library to create what it claims would be "the best search experience in the world.