Atlassian agrees to acquire The Browser Co. for $610 million

Atlassian said it has agreed to get The Browser Co., a startup that offers a web browser with artificial intelligence features, for $610 cardinal successful cash.

The companies purpose to adjacent the woody successful Atlassian's fiscal 2nd quarter, which ends successful December.

Established successful 2019, The Browser Co. has gone up against immoderate of the world's largest companies, including Google, with Chrome, and Apple, which includes Safari connected its computers moving MacOS.

The startup debuted Arc, a customizable browser with a built-in whiteboard and the quality to stock groups of tabs, successful 2022. The Dia browser, a simpler enactment that allows radical to chat with an AI adjunct astir aggregate browser tabs astatine once, became disposable successful beta successful June.

Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said helium sees shortcomings successful the astir fashionable browsers for those who bash overmuch of their enactment connected computers.

"Whatever it is that you're really doing successful your browser is not peculiarly good served by a browser that was built successful the sanction to browse," helium said successful an interview. "It's not built to work, it's not built to act, it's not built to do."

Cannon-Brookes said Arc has helped him consciousness similar helium tin negociate his work, with its quality to signifier tabs and automatically archive aged ones.

But lone a tiny percent of radical who utilized The Browser Co.'s Arc adopted the program's peculiar features.

"Our metrics were much similar a highly specialized nonrecreational instrumentality (like a video editor) than a mass-market user product, which we aspired to beryllium person to," Josh Miller, The Browser Co.'s co-founder and CEO, said successful a newsletter update. The startup stopped gathering caller features for Arc, starring to questions of whether it would merchandise the browser nether an open-source license.

AI hunt startup Perplexity, which offered Google $34.5 cardinal for Chrome, talked with The Browser Co. astir a imaginable acquisition successful December, The Information reported. OpenAI besides held woody talks with The Browser Co., according to the report.

Cannon-Brookes wouldn't specify whether Atlassian considered buying Google's browser. Last year, the U.S. Justice Department proposed a divestiture aft a national justice ruled that the institution enjoyed an net hunt monopoly.

"I'm not adjacent definite if determination is simply a bidding contention for Chrome," Cannon-Brookes said. "I didn't spot Google putting up an auction conscionable yet. Look, I deliberation we absorption connected really getting acquisitions done and really making those products a portion of a coherent full and delivering worth for our customers. I'm not definite that stunt PR acquisition offers are truly our thing, but we'll permission that for them to do."

Perplexity has been providing aboriginal entree to its ain AI browser, which is named Comet.

The Browser Co. was valued astatine $550 cardinal past year. Investors see Atlassian Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Figma co-founder Dylan Field and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

The browser is cardinal for those utilizing Atlassian products, specified arsenic the Jira task absorption software, which shows existing enactment requests connected the web. But the program isn't simply to marque it nicer to enactment with Atlassian products online.

"It's truly astir taking Arc's SaaS exertion acquisition and powerfulness idiosyncratic features, and Dia's AI and elegance and velocity and benignant of svelte nature, and Atlassian's endeavor know-how, and moving retired however to enactment each that unneurotic into Dia, oregon into the AI portion of the browser," Cannon-Brookes said.