The news: The content discovery journey is changing as AI browsers and AI search options grow in relevance and number.
Let’s look at the biggest players in the game in 2025, how they’re competing, and why AI could change the browser market in the coming year.
The stakes: While Google’s Chrome continues to dominate market share, AI browsers like Opera Neon, OpenAI’s Atlas, and Perplexity’s Comet, alongside more legacy players like Microsoft’s Edge and DuckDuckGo, are building automated, personalized, agentic search ecosystems.
These windows to the internet could leapfrog Google’s ad-based model, own the next-gen discovery layer, and capture first-party user data and intent signals to improve and customize chatbots.
The challengers: Not every AI browser is equally strong at every use case. Some excel at research, others at shopping or enterprise productivity. The ones that win may do so by owning specific verticals rather than trying to be all things to all people.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas:
- Pro: ChatGPT Atlas could close key gaps in the AI browser space by combining brand recognition, agentic power, ecosystem leverage, and user reach.
- Con: Its success will depend on how seamlessly it can blend AI automation with traditional browsing habits without overwhelming users.
Perplexity’s Comet:
- Pro: Comet excels at agentic shopping, with an assistant built to navigate pages and extract product insights automatically.
- Con: Its ad-free model—which could appeal to users tired of modern ad bloat and banner overload—may require alternative monetization paths that could limit long-term scalability.
Opera Neon:
- Pro: Its Browser Operator agent can take actions across tabs and complete tasks natively, giving it workflow advantages despite low market share.
- Con: It holds a modest percentage of the global market share, per StatCounter, giving it an uphill battle to compete with Chrome and Edge for user workflows.
Zooming out: AI browsers are shifting from mere access tools into personal operating systems for the web. The next phase of browser competition will depend less on who can index the most pages and more on who can best understand user intent, automate tasks, and deliver trusted, context-aware results.
- Expect to see tighter integrations between AI agents, browsers, and productivity suites.
- User privacy, transparency, and monetization models will emerge as key differentiators.
What brands should do: Google’s dominance won’t vanish overnight, but the power of browser defaults is changing as users experiment with AI-native experiences that feel faster, cleaner, and more useful.
Brands should still optimize for search but also focus on AI understanding. Clearly structure and frequently update content to win visibility in an agent-driven world. Those who adopt generative engine optimization strategies and adapt websites to support agentic browsers will control how—and whether—AI browsers surface them.