ChatGPT’s new AI agent can browse the web and create PowerPoint slideshows New "agentic" AI feature combines web browsing with task-execution abilities. ......... The feature marks OpenAI's latest entry into what the tech industry calls "agentic AI"—systems that can take autonomous multi-step actions on behalf of the user. OpenAI says users can ask Agent to handle requests like assembling and purchasing a clothing outfit for a particular occasion, creating PowerPoint slide decks, planning meals, or updating financial spreadsheets with new data.......... "ChatGPT carries out these tasks using its own virtual computer," OpenAI writes, "fluidly shifting between reasoning and action to handle complex workflows from start to finish, all based on your instructions." .......... OpenAI says it has implemented safeguards against prompt injections by training the model to identify and "resist" these attacks while requiring user confirmation for consequential or suspicious-looking actions. The model is also trained to actively refuse high-risk tasks such as bank transfers. During a livestream on Thursday, one OpenAI engineer characterized Agent as a system of AI models working together, some of which constantly monitor the other models' behavior for suspicious activity. Those overseers can hypothetically halt a process if they spot a potentially dangerous scenario.
Introducing ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action ChatGPT now thinks and acts, proactively choosing from a toolbox of agentic skills to complete tasks for you using its own computer. ........ You can now ask ChatGPT to handle requests like “look at my calendar and brief me on upcoming client meetings based on recent news,” “plan and buy ingredients to make Japanese breakfast for four,” and “analyze three competitors and create a slide deck.” ChatGPT will intelligently navigate websites, filter results, prompt you to log in securely when needed, run code, conduct analysis, and even deliver editable slideshows and spreadsheets that summarize its findings.
ChatGPT owner OpenAI expected to release web browser — here’s why Google should be worried OpenAI is close to releasing an AI-powered web browser that will challenge Alphabet’s market-dominating Google Chrome ........... The browser is slated to launch in the coming weeks, three of the people said, and aims to use artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how consumers browse the web. It will give OpenAI more direct access to a cornerstone of Google’s success: user data. .......... If adopted by the 500 million weekly active users of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s browser could put pressure on a key component of rival Google’s ad-money spigot. ........... Chrome is an important pillar of Alphabet’s ad business, which makes up nearly three-quarters of its revenue, as Chrome provides user information to help Alphabet target ads more effectively and profitably, and also gives Google a way to route search traffic to its own engine by default. ......... OpenAI’s browser is designed to keep some user interactions within a ChatGPT-like native chat interface instead of clicking through to websites ............. The browser is part of a broader strategy by OpenAI to weave its services across the personal and work lives of consumers ............. In May, OpenAI said it would enter the hardware domain, paying $6.5 billion to buy io, an AI devices startup from Apple’s former design chief, Jony Ive. ............ A web browser would allow OpenAI to directly integrate its AI agent products such as Operator into the browsing experience, enabling the browser to carry out tasks on behalf of the user ............ Google Chrome, which is used by more than 3 billion people, currently holds more than two-thirds of the worldwide browser market ........... Apple’s second-place Safari lags far behind with a 16% share. Last month, OpenAI said it had 3 million paying business users for ChatGPT. .............
Perplexity, which has a popular AI search engine, launched an AI browser, Comet, on Wednesday, capable of performing actions on a user’s behalf. Two other AI startups, The Browser Company and Brave, have released AI-powered browsers capable of browsing and summarizing the internet.
........... Chrome’s role in providing user information to help Alphabet target ads more effectively and profitably has proven so successful that the Department of Justice has demanded its divestiture after a US judge last year ruled that the Google parent holds an unlawful monopoly in online search. .............. OpenAI’s browser is built atop Chromium, Google’s own open-source browser code, two of the sources said. Chromium is the source code for Google Chrome, as well as many competing browsers including Microsoft’s Edge and Opera. ............. Last year, OpenAI hired two longtime Google vice presidents who were part of the original team that developed Google Chrome. ............ An OpenAI executive testified in April that the company would be interested in buying Chrome if antitrust enforcers succeeded in forcing the sale.
OpenAI vs. Perplexity: The Battle for the AI Browser Future
OpenAI is reportedly preparing to launch an AI-powered web browser in the coming weeks—one that could reshape the internet experience and directly challenge Google Chrome’s long-standing dominance. Built on Chromium, the browser is expected to integrate OpenAI’s powerful AI agents, such as Operator, allowing users to perform tasks like making reservations, autofilling forms, and navigating websites through a conversational interface. This ChatGPT-like experience shifts the focus from traditional search and direct website browsing toward AI-mediated interactions, keeping users within OpenAI’s ecosystem. The strategic move aims to enhance data collection for hyper-personalized user experiences while posing a serious threat to Google’s ad-driven revenue model.
[Sources: Reuters, InfotechLead]
Meanwhile, Perplexity AI has already taken a bold step forward with the release of Comet, an AI-powered browser also built on Chromium. Initially available to Perplexity Max subscribers ($200/month), Comet is designed around a conversational AI interface. It replaces traditional tabs and menus with a responsive agent capable of summarizing content, answering questions, booking services, and managing browsing context. Comet uses Perplexity’s proprietary search engine by default, positioning itself as an “answer engine” rather than a gateway to websites.
[Sources: The Verge, TechCrunch, Reuters]
Key Challenges Facing Perplexity
1. Market Competition and Brand Power
OpenAI’s advantage lies in its massive user base—over 500 million weekly active users of ChatGPT—and its mainstream brand recognition. While Perplexity saw 780 million queries in May 2025, it remains a much smaller player. OpenAI’s ability to onboard users rapidly could marginalize Comet before it achieves broader traction.
2. Feature Redundancy and Model Superiority
Both browsers offer overlapping features like conversational task completion, AI summarization, and browsing assistance. However, OpenAI may outpace Perplexity through deeper model integration (e.g., GPT-4o and its upcoming iterations), superior multimodal capabilities, and rumored hardware ambitions (including the $6.5 billion acquisition of Io, the AI device startup). In contrast, Perplexity relies on models like Sonar and licensing from OpenAI and Anthropic, which may limit its ability to differentiate long-term.
3. Data and Privacy Trade-Offs
Personalization is key to both companies’ AI offerings. OpenAI benefits from its wider ecosystem—spanning ChatGPT, enterprise products, and API usage—which provides a rich stream of user telemetry for optimization. Perplexity, while promoting privacy (e.g., no training on personal data, local storage), is also reportedly exploring targeted advertising for premium users—an apparent contradiction that could alienate its privacy-conscious user base.
[Sources: Beebom, Cloudwards]
4. Market Saturation and Fragmentation
The browser market is already crowded. Google Chrome holds a commanding 68% market share, followed by Safari, Edge, Firefox, and niche players like Arc (The Browser Company’s "Dia"). Both OpenAI and Perplexity are entering an environment with limited room for mass disruption. However, OpenAI’s enterprise partnerships (including possible Apple integrations) and ecosystem reach may quickly squeeze out smaller, less integrated competitors like Perplexity.
5. Publisher Tensions and Legal Risk
Perplexity is under fire from major media outlets like Forbes, which have accused it of republishing proprietary content without permission. In response, Perplexity is launching a revenue-sharing program to soothe publisher concerns. OpenAI, meanwhile, is already facing multiple lawsuits over copyright and training data but commands far greater legal, technical, and financial resources to manage these challenges and negotiate settlements.
[Sources: Wikipedia, Medium]
Strategic Options for Perplexity
To survive and thrive amid OpenAI’s entry into the space, Perplexity must sharpen its differentiation and strategic positioning:
Emphasize Differentiators: Features like ad/tracker blocking, partnerships with device makers (e.g., Motorola), and a sleeker agent-based UI could be key selling points—if effectively marketed.
Address Pricing Constraints: At $200/month, Comet’s pricing severely limits mass adoption. A lower-tier or freemium model may be necessary to scale and compete with OpenAI’s likely broader offering.
Leverage Privacy Positioning—Authentically: Perplexity should double down on being the privacy-first alternative to OpenAI—but must ensure that its data-collection policies are transparent and consistent with that claim, especially if it pursues targeted ads.
Build Strategic Alliances: Partnering with independent media, cloud providers, or mobile device manufacturers could bolster Comet’s market credibility and install base. Perplexity’s rumored TikTok merger proposal may hint at its bold ambitions, but execution and trust will be critical.
Broader Implications
This escalating AI browser war is not just a technological evolution—it’s a paradigm shift in how we use the web. Traditional search engines and websites are being displaced by answer engines and agentic interfaces. The very idea of “surfing the web” may soon be replaced by delegating tasks to AI agents that synthesize, summarize, and act.
For Google, this means defending its twin revenue streams: Chrome (user interface) and Search (ad platform).
For publishers, it means a new battle over visibility, attribution, and revenue sharing in an AI-curated web.
For users, it could mark a dramatic shift toward passive interaction—where browsing becomes a conversation rather than an exploration.
Conclusion
OpenAI’s upcoming browser could fundamentally alter the digital landscape, threatening not only Perplexity’s early-mover advantage with Comet but also Google’s grip on the internet itself. As AI-native interfaces become the new norm, success will depend not just on model quality but also on ecosystem control, pricing strategy, trust, and ethical data practices. Perplexity still has a shot—but only if it moves decisively and clearly defines its edge in a rapidly transforming market.
WATCH: @realDonaldTrump shrugs off an alleged threat from Iran that he can no longer safely sunbathe in Mar-a-Lago anymore. The president's response? He hasn't sunbathed since he was "around 7 or so." pic.twitter.com/wrFCbVgntC
ChatGPT owner OpenAI expected to release web browser — here’s why Google should be worried Opinion: The Echoes of Hitler That Make Trump the World’s Most Dangerous Man On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler held his first Cabinet meeting in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.......... Friends and sycophants surrounded the newly appointed Chancellor. The handful of holdovers from the previous regime wouldn’t be there when the group met again. ......... Hermann Goering, his right-hand man, was one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party and had known Hitler since 1922. Ernst Rohm was the only one to call him “Adolf.” SS chief Heinrich Himmler had been a friend for over a decade, and all three were at Hitler’s side in his doomed attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess shared a cell with Hitler after the failed coup......... At the Cabinet meeting, these men jockeyed for their leader’s favor. They offered ideas they knew he would like and praised him before every remark. It’s how the Holocaust was born. They knew his views on Jews and Aryan supremacy. .......... Hitler would, in turn, praise and ridicule his subordinates. He would sometimes set two of them the same task and watch them squirm to outdo one another. At this particular meeting, Goering had the Fuhrer’s ear. They discussed how a big, beautiful bill could be passed by the Reichstag, the German parliament, that would effectively hand total power over to Hitler. ........... It was necessary, they argued, to bring peace to the Fatherland and make Germany great again. ......... The only real answer, they agreed, was to persuade the Reichstag to voluntarily give up its power. And trust Hitler to usher in a new golden era. ............ Less than three months later, on March 23, 1933, hundreds of brown-shirted stormtroopers stood guard at the Kroll Opera House in Berlin as the Reichstag voted on Hitler’s Enabling Act. .......... With his implacable Nazi guards intimidating the lawmakers, Hitler told them he would end unemployment, he would bring down inflation, and broker peace with Russia, Britain and France. ............. The compliant congress voted overwhelmingly to pass the act by a vote of 441 to 84. And that was the day democracy died in Germany. .......... the specific time we find ourselves in right now in America does, indeed, have some disturbing echoes of 1930s Germany. .......... this is where the comparison with Hitler is worthy of note; there is nobody to rein him in. .......... Trump’s two-plus-hour Cabinet meeting on Tuesday had no point. There was just one reason to allow the cameras in. To show the world his casual power. Trump was so comfortable he wasn’t even trying. .......... He insults his henchmen with casual insouciance. Humiliating a crestfallen Pete Hegseth while sitting right next to him. Patting Marco Rubio as he mocks the thoroughly defeated man he once derided as “Little Marco” and continues to punish like some mugging Machiavelli. .......... He has steamrolled Congress into accepting his agenda-defining policy bill despite the ardent opposition of the GOP deficit hawks, the centrist chickens, and the MAGA vultures. He even got us all calling it his “big, beautiful bill.” ........... He harangued the Supreme Court into backing his deportation flights to God knows where. He humbled academia into accepting his lunatic DEI demands by cutting off its cash. ........ Trump’s Tuesday Cabinet was more sprawling, more unpredictable than any appearance he has ever made in front of the media and, consequently, the world. But Trump was in his element. He was like Hitler in that he knew that he held all the cards. This was his front room. His stage. ............ In 1930s America, in Long Island, New York, to be precise, scores of brown-shirted young Nazis were led on parades through the streets to a summer camp where they would be taught the doctrines that would culminate in the Holocaust just a few years later and 6,000 miles away. ........... There would be street signs in Yaphank, Suffolk County, Long Island, that would read Adolf Hitler Street. And Goebbels Street. And Goering Street. .......... The President of the United States can do whatever he wants, and there is nobody to stop him........ The checks and balances are gone.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 19, 2025
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For small companies like us, we just want to survive. Big players have all the resources, but we believe the winner won't be determined by who has more money—it'll be who innovates fastest.
Y Combinator is one of the most iconic institutions in the startup world. It has funded over 4,000 startups, including legendary names like Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. It redefined what early-stage acceleration could mean. It made demo day a cultural event. It scaled.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Y Combinator never grew up. Yes, it scaled like a factory—like you used to make five ceramic cups and now you produce 50. But scale isn’t evolution. And YC hasn’t evolved for the era we’re in. It was designed for 2005, and it’s still running the same playbook in 2025.
Can the next OpenAI be born inside YC? The answer is clear: No. And here's why that matters.
The Myth of Scalability as Innovation
Y Combinator perfected the pipeline of churning out “fundable” startups, often with minimal innovation risk. You don’t go to YC to build a moonshot—you go to YC to get a bridge round and validation. The model optimizes for safe bets, not world-changing bets.
That’s why the biggest tech bets of the last decade didn’t come from YC:
OpenAI? Born out of an elite coalition of thinkers and capitalists, not a YC batch.
NVIDIA’s AI bet? Vision from within a hardware company with deep technical roots.
DeepMind? U.K.-based and far more academically anchored than YC-style hustle.
SpaceX? Elon didn't start it with $125k and a pitch deck.
YC didn’t—and perhaps couldn’t—incubate these.
The Platform Problem: YC Is Craigslist
YC today is like Craigslist. Once, it was everything—jobs, housing, gigs. But then a thousand verticals unbundled it: Airbnb took housing, LinkedIn took jobs, Uber took rides, and so on.
YC is waiting to be unbundled in the same way.
It is a generalist factory in a world now defined by the intersections of specialized, emerging technologies—AI + biotech, crypto + supply chain, robotics + mental health. These aren’t demo-day darlings. These are decade-long labs. These are fund-and-build platforms. They require long-term, infrastructure-level thinking.
The Old Playbook Can’t Win New Games
YC was built for Web 2.0. It flourished when minimal viable products and agile iterations could quickly lead to market traction. But the new wave of innovation doesn’t move in 3-month cycles. We’re entering a world of:
Pre-trained models that cost tens of millions
Deep tech that requires regulation-savvy founders
Climate tech with long feedback loops
Decentralized protocols with complex incentive engineering
What these ventures need is not YC’s playbook. They need patient capital, deep integration with research institutions, infrastructure support, cross-disciplinary expertise, and a new breed of founder networks.
YC Is IBM. Where’s the Next Apple?
In many ways, YC is IBM now—respected, still powerful, but stagnant. You know what that makes the opportunity? We need 100 new post-YCs. Each one laser-focused on a vertical. Each one optimized for depth, not breadth. Just like Airbnb pulled one vertical out of Craigslist and ran with it, the accelerators of the next decade will do the same with YC.
We’ll see:
An OpenAI-style research-to-commercialization lab for AGI
A biotech founder accelerator with embedded labs and FDA navigation
A climate moonshot studio building infrastructure, not MVPs
A sovereign-technology accelerator for deep geopolitical alignment
Each of these would make YC look like a hobby club for hustlers with slide decks.
Point Be Noted
Let’s not confuse ubiquity with relevance. YC’s continued dominance in the startup discourse is a legacy effect. Its true limitations are masked by volume. But volume is not vision. And in the AI era, in the climate era, in the post-scarcity, post-crypto, post-Web2 world, we need vision.
The most important companies of the next 20 years won’t come out of YC.
They will be born elsewhere—on new platforms, with new rules, under new accelerators that know how to build for complexity, capital intensity, and global impact.
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— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 11, 2025
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 11, 2025
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— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 11, 2025
At an upper estimate of $900 billion, YC’s stake would be:
📊 Summary
Assumed Portfolio Valuation
YC’s Stake (7%)
Estimated Worth
$600B
7%
$42 billion
$900B
7%
$63 billion
So, YC’s 7% equity across its ~5,000 companies is likely worth between $42 billion and $63 billion, depending on how you calculate “total portfolio value.”
I can't believe that nobody wanted it in 2016! I published my book Artificial Intuition in early 2017. I had thought the Deep Learning revolution was already in full swing! In fact, Transformers were introduced later that same year. https://t.co/47ksGt6ly7
They want to talk about anything other than the super unpopular thing they are doing. Our job is to continue to talk about the super unpopular thing they are doing. https://t.co/T42WmHrBL1
Opinion: First Lady Melania and Pope Leo are right — it’s “unum” time Unum doesn’t erase conflict or pretend we all agree. It’s not utopia. It’s the hard, daily work of choosing coexistence over chaos ..... a time when America — and the world — feels dangerously divided. ....... Unum means Jewish and Muslim Americans grieving side-by-side. It means a First Lady who grew up Catholic in Slovenia invoking a motto that speaks across American synagogues, mosques and churches alike. It means a Pope who spent years in Latin America calling for peace — not as an abstract dream, but as an urgent task. .......... In moments like these, we face two temptations. One is despair: to give up, to believe the divisions are too deep. The other is rage: to blame, punish and retreat into our tribes. ......... Pope Leo XIV said it plainly: “Be bridgebuilders, peace seekers, and companions on the journey.” That’s not just a prayer. It’s a plan. ......... Because in a world driven by algorithms that divide and outrage that sells, choosing Unum is radical. It means staying at the table when you’d rather storm out. It means believing that pluralism — people of different faiths, races, beliefs and stories — can still build a shared life. ......... belonging isn’t partisan. It’s American. It always has been.
