The Browser Company of New York has halted development of its Arc web browser to concentrate its energies on an AI-powered product called Dia, which was first announced late last year. CEO and co-founder Josh Miller says The Browser Company will continue to fix security issues and deliver other critical updates for the Arc product, but no new features will be forthcoming. Dia, now in an alpha testing stage, is “an entirely new environment — built on top of a web browser,” according to the product’s website. Miller says that while “Arc had real momentum,” the current era marks “the arrival of AI browsers.”

Dia has been shown in demos “helping users write the next sentence in a paragraph, all while retrieving facts about a subject from the wider Internet,” writes Engadget, adding that it has also been seen “automatically grabbing Amazon links to insert in an email from a simple description and completing relatively complex actions based on user prompts.”

These are capabilities that will not be familiar to those who have used the extensions available in the mobile Arc browser, Engadget notes.

“Even though Arc was a triumph of design, The Browser Company is switching gears, in favor of a new AI-centric browser that will not be as ‘different’ or ‘complex’ as Arc,” ZDNet summarizes.

While Miller says in a Letter to Arc Members that if he had it to do over, he would have “stopped working on Arc a year earlier,” he concedes “we’re not trying to shut Arc down,” knowing there are many who “use it and rely on it.”

TechCrunch reports The Browser Company “has considered selling [Arc] or open-sourcing it,” so it can have some sort of viable future for its many fans. A core component of Dia is the Arc Development Kit, the internal SDK on which Arc was built, and the company doesn’t want to give up that IP.

The Browser Company was launched in 2019 by Miller and Hursh Agrawal, and released the Arc browser in hopes of providing a “clutter-free” Internet environment. In February 2024 it debuted Arc Search.

When Dia was announced in December, the company said it hoped the AI-powered product would have “broader appeal” than Arc. While the company hasn’t indicated when Dia will be publicly released, it did say “it will make the browser available for testing to Arc members,” according to TechCrunch.