Like others in this thread I’ve questioned why Kagi is developing a browser. My only guess is they at one point thought there would be some opportunities in integrating AI stuff and a browser. Because their CEO has said in the past that they are convinced of LLM usefulness but in a specific way.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some agentic features in their browser at some point. Their assistant tool is already quite good - it has replaced search for me in a number of scenarios.
The way I remember it marketed, and the way I originally found it, was as a workaround to setting the default search on iOS. This was before I was conscious of AI and before I remember it being in any of Kagi’s products.
I ended up staying because the Adblock is good (search remains good). The browser is fine. It does have bugs and needs to be hard closed occasionally.
I agree on the assistant. It is very capable. I use the Kagi mcp with coding agents and I like the results, but they have done something with their assistant that makes it even more useful.
It wasn't just Kagi. Literally every search engine decided to have its own web browser. DuckDuckGo had one. Brave has one.