Perplexity AI ventures beyond search with ‘Comet’ agentic browser to rival Google Chrome

Aravind Srinivas led Perplexity AI has confirmed that it will be launching a new browser called ‘Comet’ for providing agentic search experience. The company released a vague teaser video for the browser and open a waitlist but there is no guarantee yet on when it will release or what features it will power. 

Perplexity’s AI-powered search is among the few alternatives trying to take on Google’s dominance in the search engine market. With Comet browser, Srinivasan is aiming to do the same thing, this time in a even more crowded market and one where Google’s dominance is more stabilized.

As per Similarweb data from January 2025, Google Chrome is the undisputed leader in the web browser category, having 63.55% of the market share, with Apple’s Safari coming in a distant second at 21.81% and Microsoft’s Edge at 5.62%. 

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas also seems to be aware about the scale of the challenge he faces on entering the browser industry as in a subsequent X (formerly Twitter) post he shared a chart of Google Chrome taking over Internet Explorer and talked about the importance of following ‘full process’. 

It takes a while to change the status quo. But patience and persistence pays off. Chrome took 5 years to get ahead of IE in terms of adoption. What matters is providing a great experience to the user relentlessly for several years. Not just one release. The full process matters. ” Srinivas wrote in his post. 

In yet another post, Srinivas asked the users for a suggestions about ‘core browsing improvements’ that Google Chrome hasn’t delivered for ages. He also asked them to not mention the usual AI features like Deep Research and other basic agentic workflows, suggesting that these features may already be in the plans for the new browser.