Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said his company’s AI browser Comet, will automate two essential roles every workplace depends on–recruiters and administrative assistants. Srinivas discussed how Comet’s built-in AI agent can access applications like Gmail, LinkedIn, and Google Calendar to completely transform knowledge work, on The Verge’s decoder podcast. “A recruiter’s work worth one week is just one prompt: sourcing and reach outs,” he said during the podcast’s Thursday episode. Srinivas displayed scenarios where the browser could identify Stanford alumni who previously worked at Anthropic, compile their information in Google Sheets, and draft personalized cold outreach messages.
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Aside from recruitment, Srinivas said that the browser can play the role of several AI assistants. According to him, it can do several tasks, including email management, calendar coordination, and meeting preparation. The AI can “keep following up, keep track of responses, update Google Sheets, mark status as responded or in progress, sync with Google Calendar, and resolve conflicts to schedule meetings,” he said. Comet has also been designed to perform as a virtual executive assistant, triaging email, coordinating calendars, resolving scheduling conflicts, and generating briefs for meetings without manual intervention. “That’s the extent to which we have an ambition to make the browser into something that feels more like an OS where these are processes that are running all the time,” Srinivas said.
However, Srinivas also admits that the Comet browser struggles with complex “long‑horizon” tasks. Nevertheless, he expects it will reach its full potential within the next six to twelve months. While Comet’s developments seem to promise efficiency, there are also concerns about how they would threaten real-world jobs.
Comet, which is an AI-native browser built on Chromium, is currently in its Beta stage. While the Max subscription is relatively expensive, Srinivas says it “makes sense to spend $2,000 bucks for a prompt if users can generate business value with it.”
According to industry insiders and analysts, AI browsers like Comet aren’t just advanced chatbots, but also agentic collaborators that can transform the entire browsing experience by remembering habits, anticipating actions, and executing tasks across apps. Comet has also been built to prioritize voice-based navigation and natural language interaction, and is geared towards enterprise use cases. It also aims to support content creators through revenue-sharing partnerships, signaling a broader push to integrate AI into both business workflows and the digital publishing ecosystem.
Meanwhile, Astra, a Bengaluru-based AI startup backed by Srinivas shut down recently. Founded in 2023, Astra aimed to automate as much as 80% of an account executive’s workload using a platform that integrated with enterprise systems like Salesforce, Google Drive, Slack, and contract lifecycle management tools. However, the startup’s plans did not come to fruition, because of internal friction, as well as resistance while trying to win clients’ trust.