Mike Cannon-Brookes, the CEO of enterprise software program large Atlassian, was one of many first customers of the Arc browser. Over the past a number of years, he has been a prolific bug reporter and have requester. Now he’ll personal the factor: Atlassian is buying The Browser Firm, the New York-based startup that makes each Arc and the brand new AI-focused Dia browser. Atlassian is paying $610 million in money for The Browser Firm, and plans to run it as an impartial entity.
The conversations that led to the deal began a few 12 months in the past, says Josh Miller, The Browser Firm’s CEO. A number of Atlassian staff had been utilizing Arc, and “they reached out questioning, how may we get extra enterprise-ready?” Miller says. Massive firms require knowledge privateness, safety, and administration options within the software program they use, and The Browser Firm didn’t provide sufficient of them. Ultimately, as firms in all places raced to place AI on the heart of their companies, and as The Browser Firm made its personal bets in AI, Cannon-Brookes instructed possibly the businesses had been higher off collectively.
The acquisition is usually about Dia, which launched in June. Dia is a mixture of internet browser and chatbot, with a built-in option to chat together with your tabs but in addition do issues throughout apps. Open up three spreadsheets in three tabs and Dia can transfer knowledge between them; log into your Gmail and Dia can inform you what’s subsequent on the calendar. Something with a URL instantly turns into knowledge out there to Dia and its AI fashions. For an organization like Atlassian, which makes a complete suite of labor apps — the favored project-tracker Jira, the note-taking app Confluence, plus Trello, Loom, and extra — a option to sew all of them collectively appears clearly compelling.
Miller is evident, even forceful, that Dia just isn’t about to develop into only a wrapper for Atlassian apps, or shift to considering primarily about IT managers and enterprise options. Dia continues to be for particular person customers. It’s simply that now, it’s primarily for particular person customers at work. Earlier than, Miller says, “we talked loads about purchasing, making reservations, discovering showtimes. That’s going to go away when it comes to our focus.” He says he sees everybody else, from ChatGPT to Claude to Gemini to Replika, competing to be a central new character in your private life. He’s blissful to construct a piece device as an alternative.
For The Browser Firm, the deal is each an enormous exit and a barely stunning one. With firms like Anthropic tripling their valuation out of nowhere and virtually any startup with a .ai area identify raking in billions in funding, why get out of the race now? It’s straightforward to take a look at this deal as The Browser Firm waving the white flag, getting out whereas the getting’s good and earlier than the larger gamers totally take over.
Not surprisingly, Miller doesn’t see it that method. He provides a few causes to do that deal now, beginning with the sheer velocity at which this market is shifting. “I believe the winner of the AI browser house goes to be topped within the subsequent 12 to 24 months,” he says. For Dia to develop into actually mainstream, The Browser Firm wants large distribution, a gross sales group, and scale it merely doesn’t have and possibly can’t get rapidly sufficient. “It didn’t really feel like one thing cash may purchase, within the time horizon we had,” Miller says. He says that is the best way to ensure Dia doesn’t get swallowed by the large names.
“I believe the winner of the AI browser house goes to be topped within the subsequent 12 to 24 months”
Promoting to an organization like Atlassian additionally provides The Browser Firm some much-needed stability in an extremely frothy market. “It reverts us again to a transparent focus,” Miller says. He appears very excited to not have to fret about elevating extra money. The one objective, he says, is to get extra energetic customers for Dia, and belief that Atlassian can work out methods to flip that into extra income for the corporate.
As for what this all means for The Browser Firm’s browsers, it’s nonetheless too early to say for positive. Miller guarantees no favored-nation options for Atlassian merchandise, nor any Microsoft Edge-style popups begging you to join Jira. Miller says the workforce is much more dedicated to being a very cross-platform product, and that Home windows specifically is about to get much more consideration. He additionally says there’s an aggressive roadmap for bringing one of the best of Arc to Dia, after the corporate’s pivot angered a few of its most devoted customers. Arc’s standing hasn’t modified, and can nonetheless be maintained however not actively developed. (Studying between the strains, although? I wouldn’t rely on Arc being round for too lengthy — there’s simply no place for it on this new association.)
The Browser Firm has been by a number of modifications the previous couple of years, however its largest concept has each stayed constant and been largely right: that the period of siloed apps was coming to an finish, and that the browser can be a robust new option to work together with computer systems. Virtually everybody agrees with this concept, too: Perplexity has a browser, Google is AI-ifying Chrome at a blistering tempo, even OpenAI is reportedly near launching a browser primarily based on ChatGPT. The job in entrance of Miller now’s to not persuade the world he’s proper, however to ensure he wins. And when that you must win, it actually does assist to have a gross sales workforce.
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