Founders in Focus: Paul Klein IV of Browserbase

Each month, we’ll highlight one of the founders of Okta Ventures’ portfolio companies. You’ll get to know more about them and learn how they work with Okta. This month, we’re speaking with Paul Klein of Browserbase. To learn more about Browserbase’s recent Series A fundraising announcement, check out their launch here.
 

What is Browserbase and what is your mission?

Browserbase is building a web browser for your AI. The future of software is software doing work for you, but everybody does their work using websites and web browsers. Why can't your AI do that? That's why we're building Browserbase. To give AI access to web browsers, you need to run web browsers in the cloud, and that's really hard. We're on a mission to empower AI with web browser infrastructure and all the tools it needs to reliably browse the web and take actions on your behalf.

What were you doing prior to Browserbase that led you to this moment?​​

Before building Browserbase, I was the founder of a company called Stream Club. Stream Club allowed people to live stream from their web browser. To make that happen, we had to run thousands of web browsers in the cloud to act as a live-streaming relay. This was really, really hard. I spent my nights and weekends trying to make this headless browser infrastructure work, and it took a bunch of time. I knew this would be a painful process. 

We sold the company to Mux, a video API company, in 2020. But I couldn't stop thinking about the pains of running web browsers and what that would mean for the future of AI browsing the web on your behalf. That's why I started Browserbase. I saw all of these new AI applications and companies come into the market, and they all needed web browsers. We want to be that infrastructure provider for them so they can build the future of software and we can help power it.

What is Browserbase’s solution? What challenge does it solve?

First, Browserbase is web browser infrastructure. We reliably run thousands of web browsers, often known as headless web browsers, in the cloud for developers to connect to using browser automation frameworks like Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium. Our browsers work in multiple regions and are securely isolated, so none of your data gets leaked to any other browser or anyone who shouldn’t have their hands on it. Secondly, we offer an open-source web automation SDK called Stagehand. 

Stagehand takes natural language and converts it to browser code using large language models. This allows AI agents to generate the steps they want to take on a website and then turn it into code really easily to run on web browsers. We think with these two products, we help builders build the apps they need to build to serve the world.

Why did Browserbase want to work with Okta?

When we were raising our Series A, we knew we wanted a partner like Okta at the table. The future of the web means AI agents logging in on your behalf. And why not partner with the best authentication provider out there? Okta understands the complexities of authentication, authorization, two-factor authentication, and all the complex things that agents need to navigate when logging in to enterprise applications. We see this partnership as the beginning of a long-term relationship where BrowseBase plus Okta will unlock AI applications, being able to log in and do work for you even in the most comprehensive enterprise applications.

How is Browserbase working with Okta? What support do you look for in a corporate partner?

For us, Okta is a key strategic partner. We know they paved the way for all of the ways that people log in and authenticate with modern applications. That means we want to be a part of their roadmap. As they plan on how to serve AI, we want to make sure BrowseBase is right there with them, helping shape that plan and representing the AI agents that are going to log in on behalf of people in the future. That means getting involved with product discussions, talking to customers who want to allow AI to log in, and understanding what the future holds for AI apps that authenticate on behalf of people.

What trends do you expect to see in the Browserbase industry? 

It's clear to us that large language models and transformer models in general are continuing to become more advanced and take on more responsibility. We see this as companies like Anthropic and OpenAI release new models that can handle advanced step planning and more sophisticated tool use. This also means there's the opportunity for infrastructure providers like browser-based to sit on top of the models and provide a model-agnostic infrastructure that will allow you to swap out the best model for whatever your task may be. 

Browser-based infrastructure means more and more developers will be building software that uses AI. We see the number of AI applications exploding and startups raising capital left and right. We want to be there to provide value for these startups,  help them integrate with the Okta ecosystem, and allow their AI agents to log in just as a person would to any application.

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