Three application-layer players shipped meaningful products this week.
Perplexity brings Comet to the iPhone — free
On March 18, Perplexity launched its Comet AI browser on iOS with a built-in assistant, voice mode, and Deep Research. Comet had been a $200/month desktop product; on iPhone it's free (with Pro/Max tiers from $20/mo), and it hit #3 overall on the US App Store within about 48 hours. Putting an agentic browser in front of every iPhone user is a big distribution move for the research-agent category.
Gamma launches AI-native design
On March 17, Gamma shipped Gamma Imagine, an AI design tool for standalone on-brand assets — logos, infographics, diagrams, social posts — that auto-applies a team's brand identity and refines by natural language. Available to all ~100M users at launch, it pushes Gamma beyond decks and squarely at Canva and Adobe.
Cursor ships Composer 2
On March 19, Cursor released Composer 2, its next-generation in-house coding model (200K-token context, from ~$0.50/M input tokens), trained with large-scale RL in environments that emulate real Cursor usage. Owning the model under the agent — for cost and speed control — is becoming the app-layer coding leaders' playbook.
What it means if you're picking tools
The research, design, and coding categories all leveled up. See the community boards for research, presentations, and coding.
Sources: Comet for iOS (Perplexity) · Gamma Imagine (TechCrunch) · Cursor Composer 2