The AI browser wars are heating up. Openai and other AI companies have gained a lot of attention with their new AI-first and agentic browsers. They are positioned as direct competition to Google, which currently holds 70 percent of the market with its Chrome browser. As it stands, Google has been slow to respond to the backlash towards AI search—integrating Gemini into Chrome, largely seen as playing catch-up to rivals that were AI-first from day one.
That’s understandable, because a $100 billion business is a huge, indomitable beast for Axis. This leaves room for maneuver for the new guys, who are essentially starting with blank slates, and free reign for innovation.
Enter NEO—released for general availability worldwide today—the next step in Norton’s AI innovation journey, building on its leadership in cybersecurity and its bid to deliver the world’s first secure, zero-prompt AI browser. From the beginning, the minds behind Nine made a deliberate choice to focus on a functional AI assistant rather than chasing the trends of today’s agents. Even those willing to tolerate the risks face much more unpredictability, along with new security and privacy concerns.
General’s Chief AI and Innovation Officer Howe Xu describes No as a browser built for help before you ask—on-page, providing flow support through summaries, reminders, and context-aware suggestions without prompts or extra steps.
"It’s as if I have a highly intelligent assistant sitting next to me, helping me absorb and process a wider range of information, much faster, more deeply," They say so. "That assistant is there when you’re working on an online project, when you’re studying, when you’re studying. And based on your interest and browsing, your assistant can help you every step of the way."
Borrowing is also grounded in Norton’s unique consumer security expertise, privacy and security.
"What makes us unique is that we are giving people both peace of mind and AI functionality at the same time." XU explains. "Norton has its roots in security. We are the only game in town to build an AI native browser from the ground up with security and privacy at its core.
Zero prompt difference
Comet (Prishani) and Atlas (Opnai) were built by chat-first companies that assumed users would actively ask questions. But getting value from AI requires cognitive effort: you need to know what to ask, shift into “questioning mode,” and understand what the model can actually do. Asking the question isn’t the hard part. Realizing what to ask requires metacognition.
Neo takes the opposite view. Instead of waiting for its cue, it acts first.
"Based on my browsing interests, Neo reminds me of events I want to attend, personalizes news levels, and offers pre-made questions that I really want to explore." XU explains. "In other words, I never have to create a gesture – I’m just clicking on the insights that the AI already expects for me as if I were making a gesture.
Because most people don’t know the limitations of AI technology or how to effectively phrase sentences, expecting them to drive interactions is unrealistic for many people.
"We decided to take the burden off people. Of course you can still ask questions, but we’re designing for people who want less cognitive load and prefer AI to take the first step," He says. As with recommendations on any news or retail site, nine leverage context to land on the right content at the right time.
Nine can summarize a page and anticipate questions based on your interests and behaviors. With permission, it can also create detailed reminders – for example, by looking at repeated visits to Formula 1 websites and alerting you to upcoming races. Control remains with the person using the NEO: if interest is lost, they can remove it from the NEO’s configuration memory.
Because Nu’s browsing history and preferences are stored locally and securely, it can customize suggestions, insights and suggestions from calendar nudges to news recommendations to suggested questions in the Nu chat interface. The result is an AI-powered browser that gives people the benefits of AI without prompting. “Summary,” “Add to Calendar?” Inline actions like, “pick up where you left off,” and “drop price,” make browsing feel fast and light, without extra steps.
A quiet-by-design experience with built-in security
“Relaxed design” has guided the development of Nu, and for XU that comes down to three things: control, privacy and security, all of which is a clean, seamless experience that makes browsing fast and easy.
Rooted in Norton’s decades of security expertise, Neo’s quiet experience starts with privacy and security. Sue sees this as the bedrock of Neo’s approach: the company never knows what you’re doing, because all personal data stays on the device unless explicitly permitted.
Security mechanisms supported by Norton suppress injection threats common in other AI browsers, local processing contains sensitive information, and scoped synchronization ensures only user-approved contexts are taken across devices.
Norton also brings deep web intelligence: decades of scanning the vast majority of the Internet and developing antivirus capabilities that now understand static and runtime web content. This real-time insight allows NEO’s built-in antivirus, anti-phishing, and anti-scam technology to detect and block malicious behavior and content the moment it appears.
"When we think about peace of mind, what we really mean is that in a consistent way, in a reliable way, in a way, in a way that people can predict, so people have peace of mind," They say so. "This is very different from the design of agent browsers out there where the result is simply unpredictable, not to mention the associated latency and overhead. I believe consistency is what we need to push an AI browser to a mass population. We also have some flashy capabilities, but our main goal is that people can use it in their daily lives without having to worry about all the risks that most agent browsers introduce. Since we are quiet, reliable and safe by design, we are sure to win the hearts of a mass audience."
For anyone looking to rapidly shift to AI-powered browsing, Neo shows how Norton is fusing support, security and zero-prompt design into a single experience. See it in action on Nebroser.e.
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