Mike Cannon-Brookes, the CEO of Atlassian, has been a longtime user of the Arc browser. For years, he reported bugs and suggested new features. Now, his company Atlassian is buying The Browser Company, the New York-based startup that created both Arc and the new AI-powered Dia browser. The deal is worth $610 million in cash, and Atlassian plans to let the startup run independently.
According to Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, talks about the deal began about a year ago. Many Atlassian employees were already using Arc, but they wanted it to be more enterprise-ready with features like stronger data privacy, security, and management tools. At the same time, businesses everywhere were rapidly adopting AI, and The Browser Company was also integrating AI into its products. That’s when Cannon-Brookes suggested it might be smarter if the two companies joined forces.
The deal is mainly about Dia, a new browser launched in June. Dia is part browser and part chatbot. It can chat with your tabs and also help you do tasks across apps. For example, if you have three spreadsheets open, Dia can move data between them. If you’re in Gmail, Dia can check your calendar and tell you what’s next. Basically, anything with a URL becomes data that Dia’s AI can use. For Atlassian, which makes work tools like Jira, Confluence, Trello, and Loom, Dia offers a powerful way to connect everything.
But according to CEO Josh Miller, Dia won’t just turn into a tool for Atlassian apps or focus only on enterprise IT managers. Dia is still built for individual users, but with a greater focus on professionals at work. Earlier, the company talked about things like online shopping or booking tickets, but that focus will now stop. Miller says other AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Replika are competing to be your personal assistant in daily life, while Dia’s mission is to be a tool designed for work.
For The Browser Company, this deal is both a big success and a bit surprising. In a world where AI startups like Anthropic are suddenly worth huge amounts and almost any company with a .ai domain is raising billions, why would they sell now? To some, it might look like The Browser Company is giving up early, cashing out before bigger players completely take over.
But CEO Josh Miller doesn’t see it that way. He says the market is moving extremely fast. In his view, the winner of the AI browser race will be decided within the next 12 to 24 months. For Dia to become truly mainstream, the company would need massive distribution, a big sales team, and scale — things it doesn’t have and can’t build quickly enough.
Miller explains that this wasn’t just about raising more money. Instead, joining Atlassian is the best way to make sure Dia grows fast and doesn’t get swallowed by tech giants.
Selling to Atlassian gives The Browser Company more stability in today’s fast-changing AI market. CEO Josh Miller says it lets the team focus clearly on just one thing: getting more active users for Dia. He’s happy they no longer have to worry about constantly raising money, and he trusts Atlassian to figure out how to make money from those users.
When it comes to the future of its browsers, Miller says it’s too early to know exactly what will happen. He promises there won’t be any special features just for Atlassian products or annoying popups pushing tools like Jira. Instead, the team is focused on making Dia work across all platforms, with a particular emphasis on enhancing the experience for Windows users. The company also has a strong plan to bring Arc’s best features into Dia, since the shift away from Arc upset some loyal fans. Arc will still exist and be maintained, but it won’t be a priority — and it may not last forever.
Over the years, The Browser Company has changed a lot, but one idea has always stayed the same: the belief that the browser can replace separate apps and become the main way people interact with computers. Many agree with this vision — companies like Perplexity, Google, and even OpenAI are all building AI browsers. Now, Miller’s challenge is no longer convincing people of the idea but making sure Dia becomes the winner. And to win, he admits, you need the resources and sales power of a company like Atlassian.
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