AI agent startup /dev/agents has raised a massive $56M seed round at a $500M valuation

Many startups and enormous tech firms are constructing AI brokers or packages that may deal with multi-step duties with out person supervision. As soon as out there, these brokers might want to collaborate with one another to finish complicated jobs, resembling reserving and paying for flights, motels, and excursions.

/dev/brokers, a brand new firm began by former Google executives who helped develop Android through the early days of the smartphone period, believes a brand new working system is required to completely understand the potential of AI brokers.

“Earlier than Android existed, we may all see the promise of cell, however as a developer, it was simply too exhausting to construct something on cell,” mentioned David Singleton, the corporate’s co-founder and CEO (pictured above). “We’re seeing the identical factor once more. We are able to see the promise of AI, however as a developer, it’s simply actually exhausting to construct something good.”

Previous to launching /dev/brokers, Singleton was the CTO of Stripe, and earlier than that, he led AndroidWear at Google. With /dev/brokers, he argues that builders at the moment don’t have normal instruments and techniques on high of which to construct AI brokers, and hopes to fill that hole by making a unified platform that may be the working system of the AI world.

The corporate says its cloud-based working system will work throughout units, and utilizing generative AI, will current customized person interfaces.

“What we’re making an attempt to do right here is much like what we did with Android,” Singleton mentioned.

If that sounds promising to you, /dev/brokers’ traders may agree.

This week, the corporate mentioned it has raised a $56 million seed spherical co-led by Index Ventures and Alphabet’s unbiased development fund, CapitalG, with participation from Conviction Capital, a enterprise agency based by Sarah Guo. Quite a lot of outstanding tech leaders, together with OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathi, Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, and Android founder Andy Rubin additionally participated within the spherical. Rubin will even function an advisor to the corporate.

The deal valued the corporate at $500 million, based on an individual with information of the funding.

Many traders are satisfied that fully-functional AI brokers are coming quickly, however they nonetheless admit that the technical infrastructure for that future isn’t out there but. And though a lot of firms are creating completely different components of the AI agent framework,  /dev/brokers’ backers imagine {that a} new, third-party working system could possibly be the important thing to unlocking their full potential.

Nina Achadjian, a associate at Index Ventures, mentioned that she jumped on the alternative to again /dev/brokers.

“It’s a brilliant troublesome technical downside, and a extremely large thought,” Achadjian mentioned. “But when there was one staff to do it, the staff that constructed Android and Stripe from the bottom up could be the staff.”

Along with Singleton, /dev/brokers was co-founded by Hugo Barra (CPO), who was beforehand VP of Android’s product administration at Google and led Meta’s Oculus VR division. The corporate’s two different co-founders embrace Ficus Kirkpatrick (CTO), an early Android engineer and a former VP of AR/VR at Meta; and Nicholas Jitkoff, who labored as a principal designer on Google Chrome and held senior roles at Dropbox and Figma.

Jill Chase, a associate at CapitalG, mentioned that as a growth-stage fund, it’s exceedingly uncommon for her agency to put money into a pre-product firm. “We’ll do it when two issues are true: first, when the market alternative is so large and generational,” she mentioned. “The second criterion is the staff needs to be actually distinctive. That would not be extra clear on this occasion.”

The corporate expects to have the primary model of its product out there by early-to-mid subsequent 12 months.

As for /dev/brokers’ enterprise mannequin, Singleton mentioned it possible gained’t be too completely different from how Android is monetizing its working system now.

“You possibly can think about loads of commerce occurring on this platform,” he mentioned. “We’d be capable of both take a reduce” of gross sales or cost customers for subscriptions, he added.