This week, Deta announced the shutdown of their managed services.
We’ve got some unfortunate news: we’ve made the decision to shut down Deta’s managed services. This means our managed AI, automatic updates, extensions & signed releases will no longer work.
We’re planning to sunset these services from November 25, 2025. If you’re using Surf, we recommend moving to an open source release.
Thank you.
After almost 7 years, we couldn’t make Deta & Surf work as a startup. Nonetheless, we will continue to work on open source Surf, and we hope you continue to be a part of it!
Heartfelt thank you to everyone for all the support along the way.
This came as somewhat of a shock to me, having felt more connected to Deta than the other browser companies. Last year, I did two calls with a design engineer at Deta, Felix Tesche, where I offered feedback (if you want to read more about that, I’d suggest my article from March about Surf).
It was obviously coming. The Browser Company, much larger than Deta, had been acquired. ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity Comet had come out — companies that already had a foothold in the market.
Deta Surf was such a gem. While OpenAI and Perplexity’s offerings might have had more capability, they felt like the next Chrome. Surf felt like the next Arc, bursting with personality and quirky details. Where Surf has notebooks, documents you can fill with your own findings and those of AI, Comet does everything for you. Where Surf has Surflets, apps you can create with Claude and and pin to your home page, Atlas has browser memory.
I believe that within the next few months, the only AI browsers people will be talking about are Atlas and Comet, and those will look just as corporate and impersonal as they do now. Without smaller players like The Browser Company and Deta, there’s nothing stopping the others from becoming just like Chrome.
I don’t hate Atlas and Comet — I think they’re really cool tools. But every cool tool has its weaknesses, and a big one for me is the lack of personality. I want to feel the designer behind it, not a robot. I want to see intentional choices — even if I don’t agree with them. I want to see interesting typography, new layouts, and fearless changes to traditional elements like the tab or URL bar. I want the same advanced AI features as Comet and Atlas, but infused with a sense of personality that Comet and Atlas just lack.
The Browser Company left a huge impact on the browser industry and the tech industry more broadly, whether it’s vertical tabs, favorites, spaces, or the brand identity itself (looking at you, Interaction Company of California). But it’s also about surviving, yourself, as a company.
In an ideal world, every browser company would be Deta. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. Or will it?