AI browsers were all the craze in 2025. Corporations large and small tried to construct browsers that baked in AI in an effort to own the interface people use to browse the web.
How the turns have tabled. Today, OpenAI’s Atlas is history, and The Browser Company sold to Atlassian, with its Dia browser now specializing in productivity use cases. Firefox tried to strike a balance in its own AI efforts by providing an off-switch, however it got shouted at anyway.
This 12 months, the main focus has shifted to agents and automation. Startups like Strawberry, Browser Use, and Aside are constructing browsers with an agentic slant, and even Perplexity’s Comet has moved towards providing browser agents.
Amid this modification, a startup called Polar has come out with an AI-first browser aimed toward knowledge staff, and it has now raised a $5.7 million seed round led by Madrona.
CEO, Kevin Jiang, who previously worked at Perplexity on Comet, said the primary wave of AI browsers aimed to alter default seek for users and have them chat with tabs for doing tasks like travel booking, which wasn’t a robust long-term proposition.
“Should you take into consideration end-user consumers, they don’t book a flight or make a reservation daily or every week. There wasn’t a robust pull for mass consumers to go to an AI browser and find value in it. That’s why our AI browser isn’t focused in any respect on mass consumers. We’re focused on where we predict browser agents are literally precious, which is knowledge work,” Jiang told TechCrunch.
With Polar, users can schedule workflows, save prompts and assign tasks to agents based on their open tabs. The corporate says the browser will be easily utilized by non-technical users, and might help with work like sales, recruitment, marketing, research and business operations.
The browser itself is free to make use of, and also you get a couple of each day credits to spend on AI tasks. Users that want higher credit limits will pay for subscription plans ranging from $20 per 30 days.
Polar says most of its current user base just uses its browser for automating tasks while using one other browser as their each day driver. The startup’s goal is to turn into a tool for automation, and it believes that the browser is currently the perfect method to do it. Still, it’s open to exploring other avenues, equivalent to computer use.
Sabrina Albert, a partner at Madrona, said automating tasks for knowledge staff is a big market.
“I believe that the hard part is constructing really reliable agentic work on the open, logged-in web. Constructing an internet browser has an entire set of various benefits of understanding how users interact and have interaction with web sites. Plus, they’re logged into most of those web sites, giving the tool access to services they use essentially the most,” she said over a call.
The round also saw participation from ex-GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, 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.
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