Are AI browsers the next big thing?

The tough thing about any new product is defensibility. What about your product prevents a much wealthier competitor or incumbent from flipping a switch overnight and becoming a better version of you?

When companies, especially startups, build new products, they’re always asked, “What’s your moat?” In other words, what makes your product defensible? What makes it hard for someone with way more money and talent to build what you’re building faster, better, and at scale? That question keeps getting harder to answer; these days, it feels like everything’s already been built, or that tech giants can just sit back, watch the market, see what’s working, and drop a better version of your product into the world overnight.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has undoubtedly been in that phase over the last few years, and now, we are entering a period where this cycle will begin to take place around a new AI product: AI web browsers.

What is an AI browser?

Unsurprisingly, an AI browser is exactly what it sounds like: a traditional web browser, but with artificial intelligence built directly into its core. Instead of just helping you access and navigate the internet, an AI browser actively assists you while you’re online, allowing users to summarize pages, automate certain workflows, and answer questions directly on the web page you are already on.

This represents a big shift in today’s average AI workflow; instead of tabbing over to ChatGPT or copying and pasting text into another app, the AI model will be inside the browser. In theory, it will turn the browser from a passive window that you can only view into an active assistant that travels with you as you browse and that you can call on for support or to take an action whenever you need it, without opening a new app or switching to a new window.

Why Perplexity’s AI browser launch is getting all the attention

To be fair, AI browsers aren’t brand new. Opera launched “Opera One” with a built-in AI assistant called Aria back in 2023. The Browser Company followed with its beta launch of “DIA” in June 2025. But the conversation didn’t pick up until Perplexity soft-launched its AI browser “Comet” on July 9.

The reason Comet made a splash while others didn’t is because Perplexity‘s is a household name in the AI industry; it’s one of the top five consumer-facing AI companies thanks to its generative AI chatbot, and now, it’s looking to gain even more market share by providing users with an AI-powered web browsing experience.

Comet functions like a regular web browser but with Perplexity built directly into every page. That means you don’t have to leave your tab to get a summary, ask a question, or take action. The AI is already there with you.

This provides users with several advantages; they no longer need to copy and paste, take screenshots, or bounce between tabs just to use their generative AI chatbot of choice. Instead, they will be able to achieve the same results all in one window with a smoother, directly integrated experience.

Comet also has true agentic capabilities; in a demo, a user opens Gmail and tells Comet to draft and send an email. The AI writes the message and sends it after a quick confirmation from the human in the loop, asking if the email is OK to send, all without switching between tabs or waiting for user direction at every step. That being said, reviews say Comet’s agent can handle simple tasks like sending emails pretty well, but for more complex tasks like booking travel, it still messes up.

What’s also worth noting is that Perplexity’s own AI powers the default search engine on Comet. Every query gets an AI-generated summary before any traditional search results are shown. This is a vital feature in a digital era where users increasingly stop at the AI answer and never click through.

At the moment, Comet isn’t widely available yet. Perplexity has only opened it to its $200/month “Pro Max” subscribers and a small group of invited users. Everyone else is on a waitlist.

Still, the launch made enough of a splash that the other players in the industry are already trying to catch up. The same day that Comet was rolled out, OpenAI announced it would soon be releasing an AI browser of its own.

Why AI companies suddenly care about AI browsers

That means fewer people are heading to dedicated AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity’s main site. They’re just typing into the browser and getting their answer right there.

On top of that, people are already used to how Google Search works. Google didn’t reinvent the wheel or try to get users to adopt an entirely new workflow; they just injected AI into the workflow their users were already familiar with, which is a big win in terms of adoption and retention.

When you consider those elements, especially the fact that companies are losing market share to Google’s AI Summaries and AI Mode, it makes sense why a company would want a search interface of its own. These new AI search experiences are quickly becoming AI’s “killer app.” If a company is not already offering one, it is probably losing users to those that do.

Beyond wanting an interface for their AI search engines,there will be another layer to the AI browser phenomenon that tech giants will find attractive: search engines print money through advertising. If you own the browser and the search engine inside, you control the real estate where those ad dollars are made. This is a pretty clear path to monetization, especially for AI companies that have yet to turn a profit and are still searching for a sustainable business model.

This points to the idea that launching an AI browser is less about launching innovative tech and more of a strategic move to fight back against Google’s AI Summaries and AI Mode so that companies can regain users and potentially build a new stream of revenue.

What is the biggest barrier to AI browser adoption?

With all that being said, there will be a significant obstacle in these AI browsers being successful: user adoption.

Most people have been using the same web browser for years. It remembers their passwords, it has their extensions, it syncs their bookmarks, and it knows their habits. Switching to something new and AI-infused might sound attractive, but in reality, most users won’t see the same sort of upside as they would from a browser they have decades of use on. The convenience of browser history and behavior over time is hard to replicate. So, unless the AI features solve real problems in the Internet users’ experience or improve their lives, most users probably won’t think it’s worth the tradeoff.

This brings me to this final point: building an AI browser isn’t the hard part. Getting people to leave their current one is. An implicit trend I have been more vocal about is that new AI products keep coming out, and the average person has no idea how or when to use them. Unfortunately, AI browsers might fall into this category, like AI agents did, unless there is some educational campaign around their use and usefulness.

If I had to bet, I’d say the features packed into these AI browsers might have better luck as browser extensions. This would let people keep using the browser they are already used to, but would give them the ability to call on generative AI on any page they visit, without leaving the tab; these extensions could also give users the option to choose if they want their default search engine for when they type questions into the address bar to route queries through Google (the default search engine for many popular browsers) or their preferred AI model.

Even though the web browser is probably due for an update, the goal of these AI companies should not be to reinvent the browser, but instead, to meet users where they already are while providing a better experience that solves real problems in the user’s life.

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