Browser Company CEO says AI agents are a fantasy, not a product

Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, sparked a viral debate this week with a blunt X post: "nobody is really using AI Agents." The tech industry has poured billions into agentic AI—systems that can take actions like writing code, navigating websites, or automating workflows—and Silicon Valley is already designing payment systems for agents and trying to stop them from hacking organizations. But Miller, speaking from a family trip in Europe, says he hasn't heard a single non-tech person mention an agent they use. The numbers back him up: OpenAI said its Codex and ChatGPT Work agents have about 10 million weekly users combined, and Anthropic's Claude Code and Cowork are reportedly similar. Compare that to ChatGPT and Gemini, which each have roughly a billion monthly active users. Agents amount to a rounding error.

Miller's argument isn't that agents are useless—it's that they're a technology, not a product. His own experience proves the point. The Browser Company's most popular feature ever is a personalized morning briefing in its AI-powered Dia browser: when you open your laptop, you get a greeting, a to-do list pulled from your calendar and email, and a piece of art to spark joy. It's powered by an agent, but users never need to know. Miller, whose Arc browser was acquired by Atlassian for $610 million and whose first company Branch was bought by Facebook in 2014, blames industry groupthink. Tech companies are shipping the most impressive things their models can do—navigating websites, writing code—rather than building products tailored to what consumers actually want. Right now, those capabilities feel like demos. The real challenge is creating an agentic product that makes people feel calm, focused, and in flow, not one that shows off technical prowess.