Inside The Browser Company: Why They Killed Arc to Build Dia

TL;DR: Today we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast AI & I. Dan Shipper goes in depth with Josh Miller and Hursh Agrawal, cofounders of The Browser Company, which created the popular web browser Arc and, more recently, Dia. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Here’s a link to the episode transcript.

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Sometimes, building the future means grieving what you love—and following a hunch into the unknown.

For Josh Miller and Hursh Agrawal, cofounders of The Browser Company, that meant shifting focus away from Arc, a web browser with millions of users beloved in the tech community. Arc wasn’t broken. But as they explored the potential of AI, it became clear that retrofitting the browser with the technology wasn’t enough. They needed to start over. And that meant walking away from a product they’d spent years obsessing over, all for an idea they couldn’t clearly define yet.

Three weeks ago, they launched Dia in beta. Dia is a browser that makes simple internet tasks easier with AI. Instead of switching between tabs to see which Airbnb is closest to the beach, you can ask Dia to check. Or, rather than jumping between the tabs you have open for research and Google Docs, you can tell Dia to draft a consolidated summary. Dia is, by default, up to speed on everything you have going on—and helps you work with it.