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Atlassian buys browsers, Swiss AI and the Sizzler Say

Plus: They’re trying to make Poke happen

Author

Cam Wilson
September 05, 2025

Edition 2412

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The News

Atlassian splurges on some pretty browsers

Atlassian has splashed out $935 million to buy the startup behind niche Arc and its AI-powered successor Dia (CNBC). The six-year-old The Browser Co. became a Silicon Valley darling when it launched its artisanal Arc browser in 2022 but didn’t catch on much beyond that. Earlier this year, it announced it was ditching Arc in favour of Dia which launched in June. Mike Cannon-Brooks told friend of the Sizzle David Swan he believes “the browser can become your memory of everything you’ve done at work.” (SMH)

The Sizzle: I’m scratching my head a little bit about this purchase. Apparently, Arc was very popular at Atlassian (including with MCB). But what value does an AI browser have for the company behind Confluence beyond buying a lottery ticket in case we’re all using AI browsers in 2028? This quote from a Verge interview with The Browser Co.’s CEO gives a bit more insight but I’m still not sure why it means Atlassian needs to own it.

Open up three spreadsheets in three tabs and Dia can move data between them; log into your Gmail and Dia can tell you what’s next on the calendar. Anything with a URL immediately becomes data available to Dia and its AI models. For a company like Atlassian, which makes a whole suite of work apps — the popular project-tracker Jira, the note-taking app Confluence, plus Trello, Loom, and more — a way to stitch them all together seems obviously compelling.”

Josh Miller, The Browser Co.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Switzerland launches its own home-grown, ethically sourced, Fair Trade™ LLM

The Swiss Government has released its own open-source, non-copyright infringing AI large language model (Swiss-ai). Called Apertus, the multi-language model has been trained on publicly available data and excluded websites that opted-out from AI training. It’s pitched as “a building block for developers and organizations for future applications such as chatbots, translation systems, or educational tools.” You can try it in a browser here.

The Sizzle: This is cool as hell! Rather than handing over our data for pennies (or nothing) to foreign companies for their profit, why shouldn’t we build and release models based on our expectations, our rules and our culture? I’d love to see the NLA do something like this.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

The Sizzler Say

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

  • Hollow Knight: Silksong is the biggest game in the world today, made by a tiny team in Adelaide (ABC News)

  • Paris-based econocrat warns ‘tech bros’ should not dominate the AI regulation debate (Capital Brief, $)

  • IFA 2025: Samsung Sound Tower ST50F and ST40F party speakers coming to Australia (GadgetGuy) hell yeah party speakers

  • Nepal will ban TikTok unless it agrees to open an office in the country (AP News)

  • Nvidia dominates GPU shipments with 94 percent share — shipment surge likely caused by customers getting ahead of tariffs (Tom's Hardware)

  • Uber offers driver-partners a side hustle: AI data labelling (The Economic Times, $)

  • Melania Trump and tech CEOs discuss saturating US schools with AI (The Guardian)

  • COVID vaccine locations vanish from Google Maps due to alleged “technical issue” (Ars Technica)

  • Apple sets its sights on turning future Apple Vision product into smart sunglasses (AppleInsider)

  • Apple’s Wallet app just made it easier to Pay Later for purchases (9to5Mac)

  • Russia promotes ‘national messenger’ to vanquish WhatsApp

    (Financial Times, $)

  • New TP-Link zero-day surfaces as CISA warns other flaws are exploited (BleepingComputer)

Does anyone want to buy the Sizzle?

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

They’re trying to make Poke happen

Ignore the story about bankruptcy lawyer Mark S. Zuckerberg suing the Facebook führer Mark Zuckerberg (NYPost), that’s a distraction from the real big news: Facebook is trying to bring back the Poke (TechCrunch). While technically always available but hidden, Meta is doing a push to popularise the never-really-explained Poke feature (Facebook) and have added a poke counter, which people speculate is an attempt to emulate Snapchat’s purportedly addictive Snap Streak feature and boost engagement. Nothing’s innocent anymore — not even the poke.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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