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Manystartupsand large technical school company are building AI agent or programs that can care multi - step tasks without drug user supervision . Once available , these agents will need to get together with each other to complete complex job , such as booking and compensate for flights , hotel , and junket .
/dev / broker , a new company started by former Google executive director who assist originate Android during the former day of the smartphone era , believes a new operating system is needed to fully realize the potential of AI agents .
“ Before Android existed , we could all see the promise of Mobile River , but as a developer , it was just too difficult to work up anything on mobile , ” say David Singleton , the company ’s co - father and chief operating officer ( fancy above ) . “ We ’re seeing the same thing again . We can see the promise of AI , but as a developer , it ’s just really heavy to build up anything good . ”
Prior to launch /dev / agents , Singleton was the CTO of Stripe , and before that , he precede Android Wear at Google . With /dev / agents , he argue that developer currently do n’t have received tools and system on top of which to make AI agents , and hopes to fill that disruption by make a unified chopine that can be the run organization of the AI humanity .
The troupe says its cloud - based operating organization will bring across devices , and using generative AI , will present personalized user interfaces .
“ What we ’re trying to do here is similar to what we did with Android , ” Singleton said .
If that sounds call to you , /dev / broker ’ investor might harmonise .
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This workweek , the party said it has bring up a $ 56 million seed round of drinks led by Index Ventures and co - led by Alphabet ’s autonomous growth monetary fund , CapitalG , with participation from Conviction Capital , a venture house set up by Sarah Guo . A number of prominent tech leader , including OpenAI co - founding father Andrej Karpathy , Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang , Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora , and Android founding father Andy Rubin also participated in the round .
The tidy sum valued the party at $ 500 million , according to a person with noesis of the investing .
Many investors are convinced that fully functional AI agent are get soon , but they still hold that the technical base for that future is n’t available yet . And although a number of companies are developing different part of theAI agent framework , /dev / agent ’ backers believe that a Modern , third - party operating system could be the key to unlock their full electric potential .
Nina Achadjian , a partner at Index Ventures , say that she jumped at the opportunity to back /dev / agents .
“ It ’s a extremely hard technological problem , and a really great idea , ” Achadjian say . “ But if there was one team to do it , the team that built Android and Stripe from the soil up would be the team . ”
In summation to Singleton , /dev / agent was co - founded by Hugo Barra ( CPO ) , who was antecedently VP of Android ’s product management at Google and led Meta ’s Oculus VR variance . The company ’s two other co - founders include Ficus Kirkpatrick ( CTO ) , an early Android engineer and a former VP of AR / VR at Meta ; and Nicholas Jitkoff , who work as a principal interior decorator on Google Chrome and reserve senior role at Dropbox and Figma .
Jill Chase , a partner at CapitalG , sound out that as a development - stage stock , it is exceedingly rare for her business firm to endow in a pre - product company . “ We will do it when two thing are true : first , when the grocery opportunity is so monolithic and generational , ” she say . “ The second criterion is the team has to be truly exceptional . That could not be more clear in this instance . ”
The company expects to have the first variant of its product available by early - to - mid next year .
As for /dev / agents ’ concern model , Singleton say it belike wo n’t be too different from how Android is monetizing its operating organisation now .
“ you may conceive of a lot of commercialism happening on this chopine , ” he tell . “ We would be able-bodied to either take a slice ” of sales or charge users for subscription , he added .
