Can Mozilla's New CEO Make Firefox the Most Trusted Browser?

When Mozilla announced on 16 December that Anthony Enzor-DeMeo would become its next CEO, the company signaled that its future would be shaped not by chasing Big Tech’s scale, but by doubling down on trust.

Anthony, previously the General Manager of Firefox, succeeds interim CEO Laura Chambers, who returns to Mozilla’s corporate brand alongside President Mark Surman.

His elevation comes as Mozilla confronts a browser market dominated by Google Chrome and an industry racing to embed AI into nearly every consumer product.

Anthony said in the firm’s announcement: “The browser is AI’s next battleground.” He added that it is where questions about data use and user choice will be decided.

From product operator to Chief

Anthony joined Mozilla in 2024 and quickly became responsible for its most important asset: Firefox.

Before Mozilla, he served as Chief Product and Technology Officer at home-rental startup Roofstock and held senior product roles at Better and Wayfair.

He began his career at Dealer.com and holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Firefox remains the company’s most visible product, its primary source of revenue and the clearest expression of Mozilla’s values around openness and user control.

Over the past year, Anthony led efforts to modernise Firefox with features like tab groups while exploring how AI could be integrated without undermining user trust.

As Anthony put it in his first interview as CEO with The Verge: “Priority one [for Mozilla] is still building the best browser.

“I am very pragmatic that that is our core business, and it would take a lot to prove otherwise.”

A browser-first AI strategy

The interview with The Verge followed Anthony's appointment. In it, he framed the firm’s AI approach as a reaction against what he sees as an erosion of trust across the tech industry.

“I think what’s actually needed now is a technology company that people can trust,” he said. 

Mozilla is not building its own large language model, but it is preparing to introduce an AI Mode in Firefox in 2026.

The defining feature, Anthony says, will be choice: “We’re not incentivised to push one model or the other, so we’re going to try to go to market with multiple models.”

The same philosophy underpins existing experiments such as AI Window, an opt-in assistant that lets users select models and privacy settings, and Shake to Summarise, an iOS feature recognised by TIME as one of the best inventions of 2025.

Mozilla’s position, Anthony argues, is that AI should always be optional. Users should be able to understand what a system is doing, why it works the way it does and how their data is handled, or turn it off completely.

Growth without abandoning the mission

The challenge for Anthony is not only philosophical but financial as the firm has spent recent years restructuring, laying off staff and defending a business model heavily dependent on Google search revenue.

He told The Verge: “I do think we need revenue diversification away from Google, but I don’t necessarily believe we need revenue diversification away from the browser.”

His plan relies on expanding Firefox into a broader ecosystem of paid and ad-supported services, including subscriptions, privacy tools such as Mozilla VPN and Monitor and carefully designed advertising.

In a message published alongside the announcement, Anthony laid out a longer-term vision: “We will measure our progress against a double bottom line. Our work must advance our mission and succeed in the market.”

Over the next three years, that means investing in AI aligned with the Mozilla Manifesto, diversifying revenue beyond search and growing Firefox across generations.

He said: “People want software that is fast, modern but also honest about what it does. Mozilla and Firefox can be that choice.”