The AI agent landscape is heating up, and one platform is reaping the benefits of its connection to the viral Manus AI "agent" platform. Browser Use, a tool designed to make websites more accessible for agentic applications, has experienced explosive growth in the past week, with daily downloads more than quintupling from around 5,000 on March 3 to 28,000 on March 10, according to co-creator Gregor Zunic.

The sudden surge in interest can be attributed to a post about how Manus leverages Browser Use, which garnered over 2.4 million views and hundreds of reshares on X. Browser Use is one of the components Manus employs to execute various tasks, such as clicking through site menus and filling out forms. This exposure has led to a significant increase in downloads, with Zunic stating that the platform has become the "biggest trending repository" on GitHub.

Zunic, along with co-founder Magnus Müller, launched the eponymous company behind Browser Use last year out of ETH Zurich's Student Project House accelerator. The duo had a vision that web agents – agents that navigate websites and web apps autonomously – would be the "big thing" in 2025. What started as casual brainstorming turned into a challenge to build something small, launch it, and see what happens. The result was an MVP built in just four days, which quickly rose to the top of Hacker News.

Browser Use extracts a website's elements – buttons, widgets, and so on – to allow AI models to more easily interact with them. The tool can manage multiple browser tabs, set up actions like saving files and performing database operations, and handle mouse and keyboard inputs. A demo of Browser Use in action showcases its capabilities.

The company behind Browser Use offers managed plans, but also provides a free, self-hosted version of its software. It's this free version that has seen massive adoption in recent days. Zunic's strategy is to "sell a shovel" to developers chasing after the gold rush of web agents, aiming to create a foundation layer that everyone will build browser agents on.

Zunic's ambitious prediction is that there will be more agents on the web than humans by the end of the year. While this may seem overly bullish, several analysts predict that the broader market for AI agents will indeed grow enormously in the months to come. According to Research and Markets, the sector will reach $42 billion in 2029. Deloitte anticipates that half of companies using AI will deploy AI agents by 2027.

Browser Use's timing appears to have been fortuitous, capitalizing on the growing interest in AI agents. As the market continues to expand, it will be interesting to see how Browser Use and other players in the space evolve and adapt to meet the demands of developers and users alike.

In conclusion, the explosive growth of Browser Use is a testament to the increasing interest in AI agents and their potential to transform the way we interact with the web. As the sector continues to mature, it will be crucial to monitor the developments and innovations that emerge from this space.