Why Sam Altman and OpenAI are making a web browser

Business Insider

a day ago

OpenAI kicked off the AI boom with ChatGPT in 2022. It plans to make some kind of mystery gadget with famed Apple designer Jony Ive.
It is also working on … a web browser?
Yes: Sam Altman and company are working on a web browser — something most of you don't spend much time thinking about, even though you use it all the time. Like when you're reading this article.
OpenAI's interest in a browser is something of an open secret in tech. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the company plans to release its browser "in the coming weeks."
But why would OpenAI spend time on tech that seemed very important in the 1990s — when the internet was brand-new — but doesn't seem top of mind right now?
OpenAI won't tell me. A rep there declined to comment on the existence of the company's browser project, or anything else.
But people who spend their time working on browsers think OpenAI's plan is straightforward: Like other AI companies, OpenAI says it will make virtual assistants that can learn about you, figure out what you need, and provide it whenever you need — that's the " agentic" future AI people keep talking about. And in order to do that, it will need to peer into your life, and it will need to access all sorts of data and sites.
An app can't do that. But a browser, in theory, can —especially for people who spend a lot of time using their computers for work, shopping, and other high-value tasks.
If you're on a browser right now, think of how many other tabs you have open, and how much data each one of them contains about you — not just the sites you visit, but the spreadsheets and docs you're working on, and/or how you manage your finances and everything else.
"If you believe that AI agents are going to be the future of our industry, those agents will need two things," says Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company. "They will need access to the tools you use every day, and they need to be with you as you're doing your work, so they have context."
And for those same reasons, some tech folks argue, OpenAI owning a browser isn't just nice to have — it's a crucial part of the company's plans. It's also a way to protect itself if competitors like Apple or Google — who have their own AI agendas — limit OpenAI's access to their platforms.
But announcing you have a browser is different from getting people to switch browsers, which isn't something most people do willingly or often.
If you're a normal person, you likely haven't thought about which browser you use in some time — you probably use Chrome, Google's browser, or Safari, the Apple browser that comes as the default option on iPhones and MacBooks.
Before that, you may have used Netscape Navigator — the first browser many people used to get on the web — or Internet Explorer — Microsoft's answer to Netscape, which it promoted aggressively (and, the US government argued in court, illegally).
But periodically, people keep trying to introduce new browsers. Brave, for instance, launched in 2016 by promoting itself as an ad-blocker, but has since emphasized connections to crypto. The Browser Company launched its Arc Browser widely in 2023, pitching it as a browser for people who were frustrated with Chrome.
"Browser markets are immortal," says Brave CEO Brendan Eich, arguing that opportunities for new entrants pop up every few years.
Brave says they now have more than 90 million active users — not huge, but enough to crack some lists of browsers ranked by market share. Meanwhile, The Browser Company has announced that it is moving on from Arc to focus on Dia, a new, AI-first browser. Miller says Arc topped out at a "few million." He says the company immediately found a group of fans willing to spend time learning how to use its complicated set of features, and loved it — but that it struggled to find more users after that.
Neither Eich nor Miller has a silver bullet for getting new browsers into people's hands, other than getting the software into the hands of enthusiastic users who tell other people to use it, too.
Are there other options? Microsoft famously bundled Internet Explorer with its Windows software, to brute force itself into market share — which, again, triggered a bruising antitrust suit. But even if OpenAI has 800 million users worldwide — per a recent Sam Altman kinda-suggestion — it would make no sense for the company to require those users to download its browser. "If you try to force a browser down people's throats, they rebel," Eich says.
Which means that Altman has to convince users that OpenAI's browser isn't just better than the alternatives, but offers new tools and new ways to use them.
Sam Altman is very good at selling. But is he that good?