Agentic AI
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Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
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Next-Generation Technologies & Secure Development
Perplexity’s Comet Blends Familiarity With Agentic AI to Reshape the Web
Perplexity, the fast-rising artificial intelligence search engine startup backed by the likes of Nvidia and Jeff Bezos, is riding on a cosmic high with the launch of Comet – a full-featured AI-native web browser that claims to “browse at the speed of thought.”
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Currently in beta and invite-only for premium users, Comet is positioned as the next interface layer between users and the internet. Built on Chromium, the open-source framework behind Chrome and Edge, it integrates Perplexity’s search engine and generative AI directly into the browsing experience.
For Aravind Srinivas, the 31-year-old founder of the $18 billion startup, it could be the “killer app” for AI.
And it’s caused a bit of a stir.
“Don’t count Comet out,” said John B. Dickson, CEO of Bytewhisper Security. “In the early 2000s, Yahoo, AltaVista and other browser companies didn’t take Google seriously enough and look where they are now.”
Unlike traditional browsers, Comet is “memory-native,” designed to retain contextual understanding across sessions, tasks and prompts – an early attempt at solving what Srinivas calls the “personal intelligence” problem.
The AI-powered browser blends the speed and familiarity of Chrome with a fine-grained, agentic model of user interaction. The result is a browser that reads, reasons and acts, collapsing navigation, search and task execution into a conversation-like stream.
The vision is straightforward. “There shouldn’t be a need for the user to figure out when to use what tool or the countless modes in it. Everything should blend together like a perfectly played orchestra,” Srinivas said.
That is what Comet attempts to do. Users do not have to click through layers of menus or manually switch between sites, simply prompting an agent that can act across their online activities. Whether it’s pulling relevant emails ahead of a scheduled call, rebooking travel or finding a document buried in a cloud drive, Comet introduces workflows where intent is expressed in natural language and results are synthesized and executed by the browser itself.
This functional overlay of intelligence represents a shift in what a browser is expected to do.
In fact, Srinivas anticipates Comet will eventually automate at least two white-collar roles inside every company: recruiters and administrative assistants. In the short term, this may appeal to enterprises looking for productivity gains.
Is Chrome Cooked?
There’s a strategic vulnerability in Chrome: It was never built to be agentic. Retrofitting AI into legacy interfaces often leads to awkward user experiences. Comet’s strength is in being designed AI-first, and not as an AI-afterthought.
But there’s a reason why Chrome is still the default gateway for over 3.7 billion users. It works. It’s reliable. It doesn’t guess, embellish or improvise.
AI does.
“Large language models are fundamentally generative – unlike the results page in traditional ‘Googling,’ AI will literally make up a response that it hopes is real and correct,” said Kyle Hankins, CTO and co-founder of Bytewhisper Security.
“Agentic AI carries all the same challenges, with the added risk of real consequences for its mistakes – booked trips, purchased products, cancelled meetings.”
Nevertheless, the race is on, and Perplexity is not the only candidate.
OpenAI is also rumored to be building its own browser as a rival to Chrome, designed to “keep some user interactions within a ChatGPT-like native chat interface instead of clicking through to websites,” Reuters reported. Meanwhile, other AI-native browsers such as Dia are experimenting with similar concepts. Legacy player Google isn’t sitting idle either – it’s baking AI into its own products through Gemini and Search Generative Experience. The arms race is on, and Comet will need more than clever UX to tip the scales.
These parallel efforts suggest that the next phase of AI integration will unfold in the browser layer, rather than in isolated apps or chatbots.
But for putting agentic AI to use, Perplexity may have an edge.
“The browser might be the best way to build agents,” Srinivas said in a podcast with The Verge.
That premise – one part insight, one part strategy – has helped shape Comet into what could be one of the most disruptive experiments in web infrastructure since Google Chrome launched in 2008.
But then, again, Chrome was always free. As Dickson said, “Perplexity’s agent will have to stand head and shoulders above others in a world where ‘free’ still beats $200/month in fees.”
A Bid for the Browser Default
Comet is currently restricted to desktop environments, but Perplexity is actively negotiating with smartphone makers to expand its reach. According to a recent Reuters report, the company is in talks with mobile device manufacturers, including Samsung and Apple, to pre-install Comet or integrate its AI capabilities into digital assistants such as Bixby or Siri at scale.
This strategy could expand Perplexity’s user base by leveraging “browser stickiness” – a tendency of users to continue using browsers that come pre-installed or are set as the default on their devices. But Srinivas admits it’s “not easy” to convince mobile OEMs to change the default browser to Comet from Chrome.
The company is targeting “tens to hundreds of millions” of users in the coming year. That projection rests heavily on its ability to finalize deals with phone makers and demonstrate reliability.
The high expectations are bolstered by the meteoric rise of Perplexity, with investors such as Accel, Nvidia, Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt.
And if it succeeds, Comet won’t just be a new browser. It will be a new interface for the internet itself.
But as with any celestial event, the question still is: Will Comet burn bright or quickly fade into obscurity?
“The tech is sleek. The ambition is high. The investors are A-list, but this launch feels like classic ‘throw-it-and-see-what-sticks,’” said Chaitra Vedullapalli, co-founder of Women in Cloud.
“It’s branded as a comet: fast, fiery and unforgettable. But real comet behavior? Some destroy, some just flash and fade, only a few shape the cosmos. Right now, it’s unclear which one Comet will be,” Vedullapalli said.