Perplexity Aims to Reignite the Browser Wars with AI

Perplexity teases a web browser called Comet | TechCrunch

AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it’s building its own web browser. It’ll be called Comet, and it’s set to arrive ‘soon.’

TechCrunchKyle Wiggers

Begun, the AI browser wars have:

AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it’s building its own web browser.

In a post on X on Monday, the company launched a sign-up list for the browser, which isn’t yet available. It’s unclear when it might be — or what the browser will look like, even. But we do have a name: Comet.

“Just like Perplexity reinvented search, we’re also reinventing the browser,” a Perplexity spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. “Stay tuned for updates.”

I'm curious just how close Perplexity is to actually launching this browser. On one hand, they have seemingly been shipping at a good clip – their own "deep research" product fast-followed those of Google, OpenAI, and others. On the other, they're also seemingly trying to do a lot. Perhaps too much. Promising to build AI hardware seemingly based off of some tweet feedback feels like a very online thing to do (even if it sounds like they have the right general idea!).

Also perhaps the general right idea is a new browser built from the ground up for AI. Perplexity is hardly the only one to have such a revelation – The Browser Company, makers of my beloved Arc browser, appears to be betting the company on Dia, their new AI-first browser that's in the works – but they are seemingly the first to pair a large AI consumer user-based with such a product.

After playing around with OpenAI's 'Operator' product, their first real agent, it took me about five minutes to realize that to fully go after this space, they needed to build their own browser. Recent hires would suggest they're doing that (or at least thinking about it) and perhaps Perplexity's Comet announcement lights a further fire there to move faster.

Perplexity has built an impressive product going after a segment of AI that many didn't think would be a good vector: search. Now it's clearly a use case that has everyone from Google on down scrambling. So now Perplexity is going after another space in a similar "impossible" vein. At the same time, Perplexity is a startup that has raised some $500M going up against startups that are raising two orders of magnitude more than that.

Oh yes, and there's Google, and Microsoft and Apple, and everyone else already in the browser space.

OpenAI’s ‘Operator’ Shows Why They’ll Build a Web Browser

To me, the most interesting aspect of OpenAI’s new ‘Operator’ product – their first real agent – is not what it can do, but how it does it. Unlike the early iterations of similar products from Anthropic and Google, ‘Operator’ doesn’t take over your computer, it outsources the work you want to

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