Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and CEO of Atlassian, spoke at the National Electric Vehicle Summit in Canberra, Australia on August 19, 2022. Cannon Bruks is urging Australia to show more ambitions about climate action, even with new government legislators’ plans to strengthen the country’s carbon emissions.
Hilary Wardhoe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Atlassian He said he agreed to acquire Browser Co., a startup that provides a web browser with artificial intelligence capabilities, for $610 million in cash.
The company aims to enter into a second quarter agreement with Atlassian, which ends in December.
Founded in 2019, Browser Co. competes against some of the world’s largest companies. Googleusing Chrome, appleIncludes Safari on a computer running MacOS.
Startup debuted Arc in 2022, a customizable browser with the ability to share groups of built-in whiteboards and tabs. DIA Browser now allows you to chat with AI assistants on multiple browser tabs on Beta in June.
Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said he sees the flaws in the most popular browsers for those who do a lot of work on their computers.
“Whatever you actually do in your browser, it’s not particularly useful by the browser built into your name to view,” he said in an interview. “It’s not built to work, it’s not built to act, it’s not built to act, it’s not built to do.”
Cannon-Brookes said that ARC helped them feel they could manage their work with their ability to organize tabs and archive old things automatically.
However, a small percentage of people who used ARC in browser Co. were using special features of the program.
“Our metrics were more similar to highly specialized professional tools (like video editors) than mass-market consumer products. This was mentioned in a newsletter update, Josh Miller, co-founder and CEO of Browser Co., which led to the question of whether the startup would stop building new features for ARC and release browsers under an open source license.
Perplexity, an AI search startup that provided Google with $34.5 billion to Chrome, spoke with Browser Co. about the potential acquisition in December. According to the report, Openai also held a transaction discussion with Browser.
Cannon-Books did not specify whether Atlassian considered purchasing a Google browser. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice proposed selling after a federal judge ruled that the company enjoyed an internet search monopoly.
“I don’t even know if there’s a Chrome bid competition,” Cannon-Brookes said. “We haven’t seen Google auction yet. Take a look. I think we’re actually focusing on completing the acquisitions and actually making those products a consistent whole and providing value to our customers. I don’t know if the Stunt PR acquisition offer is really about us, but we can get it done.”
Perplexity offers early access to its own AI browser named Comet.
Browser Co. was valued at $550 million last year. Investors include Atlassian ventures; Salesforce Venture, Figma co-founder Reed Hoffman linked to co-founder Dylan Field;
Browsers are central to those using Atlassian products, such as Jira Project Management Software, which indicates existing support requests on the web. However, this plan does not only make operating Atlassian products better online.
“It really cites how ARC’s SaaS application experience and power user capabilities, DIA’s AI and elegance, speed, Atlassian’s enterprise know-how, and how to combine it all into the DIA, or the AI part of your browser,” Cannon-Brookes said.
