Recap: Tech companies have spent the better part of a decade collaborating to replace WebGL with a unified graphics API for PC and mobile web browsers. WebGPU debuted on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge two years ago, and now Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari have joined to support high-end graphics and AI capabilities.

Following recent updates from Mozilla and Apple, all major web browsers now support WebGPU across Windows, Mac, and Android. The new API grants web browsers flexible access to a device's GPU to run complex applications not possible with the older WebGL standard.

Support for compute shaders is one of WebGPU's most important changes compared to its predecessor. This allows browsers to run machine learning models, video processing, physics simulations, and other computationally intensive tasks on the graphics chip.

Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla will likely use these capabilities to enhance their browsers' generative AI functionality. The three are currently racing to deploy agentic browsers to compete with OpenAI's Atlas and Perplexity's Comet, which aim to disrupt the market by centering the web browsing experience around large language models.

By using a JavaScript API, WebGPU significantly reduces the language's workload and triples the performance of machine learning inference models. The API also integrates smoothly with Direct3D 12 on Windows, Metal on Apple operating systems, and Vulkan across platforms.

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Since WebGL was not designed for modern graphics hardware, its limitations, along with a growing divergence between how browsers handled graphics, sparked calls for a successor to realign them. The initial design for WebGPU was published in 2017, and it took several years before browsers could publicly test it. Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft, and Intel contributed to the open-source project.

The API initially appeared on Chrome and Edge version 113 for Windows in 2023, then on Android early the following year. In June 2025, WebKit for the Safari 26 beta brought WebGPU to macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. Firefox version 141 for Windows followed in July, and version 145 for macOS introduced support in November. Chromium users on Linux and Firefox Android users can also test the upgrade manually.

WebGPU supports the Babylon.js, PlayCanvas, ONNX Runtime, React Native, Three.js, Transformers.js, TypeGPU, and Unity libraries. Furthermore, the API's browser-specific engine implementations, Chromium's Dawn and Firefox's wgpu, are portable, facilitating cross-platform development.