LoginBrowser Wars, Continued: Why Everyone Is Building Their Own AI Browser
Written by Vivek Ramachandran, SquareX Founder, for Forbes Technology Council. This article originally appeared here.
If you lived through the 1990s, you’ll remember the first of the “ browser wars,” where Netscape and Internet Explorer fiercely competed for market dominance. Then Google launched Chromium in 2008, and this battle effectively ended. The past 17 years have been relatively quiet in the browser space-most new challengers, including Edge, are built on Chromium, and Chrome has slowly grown to own over 70% of the market. Until now.
This is the year of AI browsers. Following the release of Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas, Atlassian made a deal to acquire The Browser Company. Even incumbents like Chrome, Edge and Firefox have released their own AI features for their consumer browsers. So, what’s driving this sudden browser renaissance?
Why Do Companies Want To Own The Browser Space?
Thanks to hyperscalers and the pandemic, the past decade has seen a major shift in the modern way of working. Most enterprise applications are now SaaS apps, and, in 2022, around 62% of enterprise data was stored in the cloud (with that number expected to be much higher today)-both of which are accessed through browsers. Effectively, the browser has become the new endpoint.
In other words, by owning the browser space, one owns an essential infrastructure layer-the single point of access to every application, workflow and data that users interact with online. This is partly why the U.S. Department of Justice attempted to force Google to divest Chrome, and why the proposition of owning the browser space is so compelling to many technology companies.
Technological “Why Now?”: The AI Evolution
Since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, generative AI (GenAI) has evolved through three distinct generations, each expanding AI’s scope of action and potential impact. The first generation introduced LLM-powered AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude, as well as specialized API wrappers like Grammarly and GitHub Copilot. However, it wasn’t until January 2025 that OpenAI released Operator, the first true browser AI agent that can autonomously act on the user’s behalf, performing tasks like booking flight tickets and scheduling meetings. This served as the foundation for AI browsers.
For many technology companies, AI browsers became an unprecedented strategic opportunity to enter the browser race-a market that had been virtually impenetrable for over a decade due to Google’s dominance. With the release of agentic AI, it’s now possible to build AI browsers capable of autonomous reasoning, decision making and executing complex multistep tasks. New entrants can now offer value by changing the way people fundamentally browse the internet, making the AI browser a more compelling differentiator from incumbent consumer browsers than any browser innovation we’ve seen in recent years.
Security Implications Of AI Browsers: The Weakest Link
Yet, one major security implication of AI browsers is that security teams are now dealing with autonomous agents that complete tasks on the user’s behalf without the security awareness of an employee. Already, we’ve been seeing attacks on AI browsers that lead to these AI agents exfiltrating data, downloading malware and providing unauthorized access to enterprise apps without the user knowing. These AI browsers have the same privilege level as users, allowing them to access every enterprise app and sensitive information that the user can access.
Unfortunately, traditional security solutions like SASE/SSEs have no way to differentiate between tasks performed by a user and those performed by the AI browser, as the network traffic originates from the same browser. As AI agents and AI browsers become the new “weakest link,” this calls for the security industry to rethink the way enterprise security infrastructure is built, taking into account agentic identity, agentic data loss prevention (DLP) and attacks on agentic workflows.
In an increasingly agentic future, the browser won’t only act as a window to the web but as the primary workspace for autonomous agents and human-AI collaboration. This shift will make browsers more powerful, intelligent and deeply personalized, but also heighten the urgency for advanced browser security, as more sensitive actions and data flow through them than ever before.
Secure Any Browser and Any Device
SquareX’s browser extension turns any browser on any device into an enterprise-grade secure browser. SquareX’s industry-first Browser Detection and Response (BDR) solution empowers organizations to proactively defend against browser-native threats including rogue AI agents, Last Mile Reassembly Attacks, malicious extensions and identity attacks. Unlike dedicated enterprise browsers, SquareX seamlessly integrates with users’ existing consumer browsers, delivering security without compromising user experience.
Visit sqrx.com to learn more or sign up for an enterprise pilot.
Browser Wars, Continued: Why Everyone Is Building Their Own AI Browser was originally published in SquareX Labs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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