Atlassian acquires The Browser Company for 610 million US dollars

Atlassian has acquired The Browser Company in a cash transaction worth 610 million US dollars, entering the race in the fast-growing market for AI-driven browsers. The companies aim to close the transaction in Atlassian's second fiscal quarter, which ends in December.

According to Atlassian, The Browser Company will continue to operate as a separate company to further develop the Dia AI browser. In addition, the Arc browser, whose development has been discontinued, and Arc Search will continue to exist. A long-term plan will be presented "soon".

Thanks to the new resources that The Browser Company will receive with the takeover, Dia will remain the focus in order to "bring the browser to other platforms more quickly". The "biggest vision" is a cross-platform browser as an operating system, which is "closer than ever".

Dia is to become the "AI browser for work"

"Today's browsers were not developed for work, but for surfing. This deal is a bold step forward to reimagine the browser for knowledge work in the age of AI," said Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO and co-founder of Atlassian in the announcement.

Dia will be optimized for SaaS apps "where knowledge workers spend their day. In the future, work in an email, a project management tool or a design app will be enriched with context "that drives work forward", explains Atlassian. The browser will also be packed with AI capabilities and have a "personal memory" to connect apps, tabs and tasks. Security should also be a focus.

With Atlassian behind them, the founders of the browser company are pursuing their goal of "winning" the war for AI browsers. This is what they write in their announcement of the takeover. With a large mothership behind them and access to over 300,000 customers who use Atlassian products, including more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

Before The Browser Company was acquired by Atlassian, AI search startup Perplexity was also interested in the company. According to a report by The Information, talks about a possible takeover were held as early as December last year. According to the report, OpenAI was also in negotiations with The Browser Company. Perplexity had also expressed interest in Google's Chrome when the future of the browser was still uncertain. In July, Perplexity released Comet, its browser with an integrated AI agent. OpenAI is also said to be on the verge of launching a browser based on ChatGPT.

(afl)