Perplexity employee who worked on Comet launches AI-powered browser aimed at cognitive work

AI browsers were very popular in 2025. Companies large and small tried to build AI-based browsers in an attempt to own the interface that people used to browse the Internet.

How are turns scheduled? Today, OpenAI’s Atlas is history, and The Browser Company has been sold to Atlassian, with Dia Browser now focused on production use cases. Firefox tried to balance its AI efforts by providing a kill switch, but it got yelled at anyway.

This year, the focus has shifted to agents and automation. Startups like Strawberry, Browser Use, and Aside are creating proxy-themed browsers, and even Perplexity’s Comet has moved toward providing browser proxies.

Amid this change, a startup called Polar came out with an AI-first browser aimed at knowledge workers, and has now raised a $5.7 million seed round led by Madrona.

The first wave of AI browsers aimed to change users’ default search and have them chat using tabs to do tasks like booking travel, which wasn’t a solid proposition in the long term, said CEO Kevin Jiang, who previously worked at Perplexity on Comet.

“If you think about end consumers, they’re not booking a flight or making a reservation every day or every week. There hasn’t been a strong pull for the mass consumer to go to the AI ​​browser and find value in it. That’s why our AI browser is not focused at all on mass consumers. We’re focusing on where we think browser agents actually have value, which is cognitive work,” Jiang told TechCrunch.

With Polar, users can schedule workflows, save claims, and assign tasks to agents based on their open tabs. The company says the browser can be easily used by non-technical users, and can help with work such as sales, recruitment, marketing, research and business operations.

The browser itself is free to use, and you’ll get some daily credits to spend on AI tasks. Users who want higher credit limits can pay for subscription plans starting at $20 per month.

Polar says most of its current user base only uses its browser to automate tasks while using another browser as a daily driver. The startup’s goal is to become an automation tool, and it believes a browser is currently the best way to do that. However, it is open to exploring other avenues, such as using a computer.

Automating tasks for knowledge workers is a huge market, said Sabrina Albert, partner at Madrona.

“I think the hard part is building a really reliable proxy work on the open web that you’re logging into,” she said over a phone call. “Building a web browser has a whole bunch of different benefits for understanding how users engage and interact with websites,” she said over a phone call. Additionally, they are logged into most of these sites, giving the tool access to the services they use most.”

The tour also saw the participation of former GitHub CEO Thomas Domke, Phia founder Phoebe Gates, Modal CEO Erik Bernhardsson, Flapping Airplanes co-founder Benjamin Spector, Etched co-founder Rob Wachen, and Fundamental Research Labs co-founder and CEO Robert Yang.