Atlassian buys The Browser Company for $610m

Investors unmoved by Dia creator's purchase as share price stays flat

Trade

The maker of developer tools Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company, the creator of the Web browsers Arc and Dia, for $610 million in an all-cash deal.

The idea behind the acquisition can best be described as the role Chrome plays for Google: a gateway to all the other services owned by the parent company. The difference is that Atlassian is not targeting the entire world, but rather developers of software, websites, and apps.

The Dia browser is intended to become a kind of workshop for digital builders, where they can store and access all their digital tools and tricks as needed. These include Atlassian’s own tools, such as Jira, Trello, or Loom, but also third party AI tools.

The Browser Company has another browser, Arc. That was its first product until the pivot towards the AI-focused Dia. However, Arc remains very popular among its users – a dwindling group – due to its sophisticated features. Owing to a lack of support, more and more users are switching to the open source alternative Zen.

A long-term plan for Arc will be presented soon. This may involve a sale or possibly a spin-off into an open source environment.

Investors appear unfazed by the acquisition news. The share price ended half a percent higher yesterday.

Atlassian reported revenue of $5.2 billion and a net loss of $257 million for the recently concluded financial year.

Emerce

Read More: Acquisitions Atlassian mergers and acquisitions