Mozilla says it's building a 'rebel alliance' to challenge Big Tech and what it's doing with AI, which is wild but I'm kind of here for it

Mozilla has been carving out a space for itself in this new and frightfully fast-growing world of AI. Last month, there was backlash when it announced that Firefox would "evolve into a modern AI browser." Since then, it seems Mozilla has been clarifying what exactly this means, possibly in an attempt to reassure those who are worried the browser might become too AI-centric. And now, it's even going as far as to characterise itself as helping build a "rebel alliance" against Big Tech.

The company has released an animation- and graphic-heavy roadmap and report, which in many ways reads like a very dramatic vision statement about how it can challenge the way that AI is developing at the hands of Big Tech. It's kind of bonkers, but in a way that I can't help but get on board with.

"What if a rebel alliance of sorts—developers, activists, researchers, founders, investors—joined forces to build something different?"

It envisions that this alliance will "push AI in a direction that is trustworthy, human-centered and shaped by all of us." Which I suppose explains the focus on turning Firefox into an "AI browser."

Regarding this, Mozilla does clarify that its vision for Firefox is one of optional and opt-in AI features. For 2026, it wants an opt-in Firefox AI Window and AI Controls that "give users one central place to manage AI features, even disable them completely. Don’t want AI? Turn it off."

It's not all about Firefox, though. The changes it envisions are in part intended to arrive through investing in Firefox, of course, as well as Thunderbird, but also "investing in community", "investing in responsible tech startups", "building open-source AI dev tools", and "improving the open-source AI stack."

"Of course," Mozilla says, "big tech has bigger assets. But that doesn't mean we can't challenge them. Our assets are aimed at helping a whole ecosystem grow—and at creating an alliance that can transform tech."

Despite people not liking movement towards AI, Mozilla is angling this as in line with how it's always been, because it's sticking to its original manifesto, in particular a few principles: human agency, decentralisation and open-source, a balance of commercial and public benefit. Its new focus fits in with what Mozilla claims is a direction that maintains "a ‘double bottom line’—advancing our mission and shaping markets."

Mozilla started, it argues, by challenging Microsoft's dominance in the browser market with a "rebel alliance", and so now it is simply aiming to do the same, but to Big Tech in the world of AI:

"Twenty-five years ago, the global open source community rewrote the rules of the internet. Mozilla was a part of this. Together, we proved that an open, values-driven approach to technology could win—not just morally, but in the marketplace. We can do it again for AI.

" … It wasn't just idealism that broke Microsoft's stranglehold over the web—it was innovation; experimentation; participation; and a rebel alliance of programmers, developers, activists, investors and coders who built something new, together … This philosophy of ‘invest in the rebel alliance’ is at the heart of who Mozilla is today—and how we think we can drive change."

One of the parts of this "rebel alliance" is presumably the company's new 'Pioneers' program, which is looking to pay people to come up with ideas and build products with them on a short-term paid basis (with the hopeful opportunity to switch to a permanent role).

Part of the focus of the Pioneers program and also of Mozilla's wider roadmap is a focus on open technology, i.e. open-source software. This gels with a lot of what we're seeing at the moment; for instance, with the EU and considering how Linux is marching forward with quite some pace.

It's a nice direction to go in, of course, if it's not all talk. And that's the question, I suppose. There does seem to be somewhat of an air of techno-determinism about all this: 'If you can't beat them, join them, but do it more ethically because it's going to happen anyway.' Which is exactly the same kind of argument we've seen made by tech companies before that then ended up going in a different direction (*cough* OpenAI *cough*). I suppose time will tell.