Perplexity and OpenAI: The Failure of AI Browsers

Comet: The Precursor to Perplexity

On July 9, 2025, Perplexity marked a turning point by launching Comet, an innovative browser based on Chromium. Initially reserved for subscribers of the Perplexity Max plan, priced at $200 per month, Comet aimed to be revolutionary. Its CEO, Aravind Srinivas, presented it as a tool capable of transforming online browsing through deep integration of artificial intelligence.

Unlike browsers like Chrome or Firefox, which add AI features superficially, Comet integrates these capabilities at the core of its functionality. It offers a sidebar that can summarize articles, PDFs, or videos, manage tabs, fill out forms, compare prices, respond to emails, and even organize a calendar. With access to the user's Google accounts, Comet becomes a personal assistant capable of planning trips or updating spreadsheets autonomously.

At its launch, Perplexity stated:

"The internet has become an extension of human thought, while our tools for using it remain rudimentary. Our web interface should be as fluid and responsive as human thought itself. We created Comet to allow the internet to do what it has long demanded: amplify our intelligence."

Despite notable initial interest, Comet struggled to establish itself. By October 2025, three months after its launch, Comet became free on Mac and Windows, followed by an Android version in November and iOS in March 2026. These launches propelled Comet to the third spot on the US App Store in just 48 hours. Perplexity then claimed millions of users, reaching approximately 18 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2026. The company's valuation soared from $9 billion at the end of 2024 to $23 billion in January 2026.

The timing of Comet's launch coincided with an antitrust lawsuit against Google, filed by the US Department of Justice, demanding the divestiture of Chrome. Perplexity hoped to position itself as a mainstream alternative. However, Comet failed to surpass its initial circle of users. Kevin Jiang, a former member of the Comet development team and founder of the Polar browser, explained the product's limitations:

"When considering end consumers, they don't book flights or make reservations every day or every week. There wasn't a strong incentive for the general public to use an AI browser and find real added value in it."

In addition to these challenges, Comet faced security issues. Starting in the summer of 2025, security researchers and courts began to take a close interest in the browser. In August, Brave revealed a vulnerability that allowed the assistant to be hijacked via a simple hidden text. The fix proved insufficient, and a new vulnerability was discovered in March 2026. Simultaneously, Amazon sued Perplexity, accusing Comet of impersonating a human to make purchases on its platform, leading to a temporary injunction blocking this feature.

In response to these difficulties, Perplexity launched Comet Enterprise on March 17, 2026, a version aimed at teams, incorporating administrative controls, centralized deployment, and integration with a third-party cybersecurity tool.

ChatGPT Atlas: OpenAI's Flop

OpenAI did not remain on the sidelines and attempted to capitalize on Google's difficulties. Three months after Comet, the company introduced ChatGPT Atlas. To maximize its chances of success, OpenAI recruited several former executives from the Chrome team to develop this browser.

Exclusively available on macOS, Atlas offered a similar experience to Comet with a ChatGPT sidebar that could summarize pages, answer questions, or act directly through an agent mode reserved for paying subscribers. Its uniqueness lay in its ability to remember the context of visited sites to refine its responses over time.

Despite having a stronger backing than Perplexity, thanks to the ChatGPT user base, Atlas recorded 62 times more enterprise downloads than Comet during its launch week. It claimed up to 15 million active users in the first quarter of 2026, seemingly becoming the most used AI browser in the world.

However, this success was merely a facade. Atlas was such a failure that it was shut down in early August 2026, less than a year after its launch. The promised Windows, iOS, and Android versions never materialized.

Problems began to accumulate within the first few weeks. The Electronic Frontier Foundation quickly raised concerns about the browser's memory: during a test, Atlas retained sensitive information such as a family planning registration and the name of a real doctor. The incognito mode, intended to reassure users, did not prevent this internal memory. In terms of security, researchers pointed out that Atlas was less effective than Edge or Chrome at blocking phishing attempts.

In practice, Atlas did not convince users. The Agent mode, supposed to be the central selling point, showed its limitations as soon as tasks became complex: it clicked slowly, misclicked buttons, and sometimes abandoned tasks altogether. Many testers reported recurring bugs (frozen sidebar, crashed pages) and the absence of basic features expected from a browser, such as multiple profiles or shared view. Moreover, since all searches went through the chat, asking a simple question in the address bar was often slower than a traditional search.

The announcement of Atlas's abandonment was discreet, contrasting with the grand launch by Sam Altman during a global livestream. Its closure was announced in three sentences in a thread on X posted on July 9 by James Sun, the browser lead at OpenAI. The features of Atlas will be redistributed into the ChatGPT desktop application, in a cloud browser dedicated to agents, and in an extension for Google Chrome.