Spent more money on marketing + steve jobs cosplaying than building a browser that is better than chrome but had zero revenue for years to show for it.
They betted on the possibility that OpenAI or Perplexity would buy them. With the Google monopoly suit not requiring them to sell Chrome after all, there was no reason to raise any more money as they continued to lose money.
That looks like an exit on terrible terms, like Humane and HP.
All things considered the cash looks pretty good – maybe not the deal they wanted, but doesn't look bad all things considered.
Hard for it not to be better than Chrome, considering that it’s a Chrome fork with a few years of extra engineering thrown at it.