Unique Research · Company · November 29, 2024
Startups and tech giants alike are racing to build AI agents that run complex multi-step work without constant human oversight — booking flights and hotels, filing short-trip expenses, and more. Those agents will need to cooperate.
/dev/agents, founded by ex-Google executives who helped build Android in the smartphone’s early days, argues that unlocking agents requires a new operating system.
Co-founder & CEO David Singleton (ex-Stripe CTO; led Android Wear at Google): “Before Android we saw the mobile future, but building apps on phones was painful. We see a similar moment now. AI’s promise is huge, but developers still struggle to ship great apps.” He says developers lack standard tools and systems for agents — so /dev/agents aims at a unified platform, an OS for the AI world. The cloud OS is meant to run across devices with generative AI–driven personalized UIs. “What we’re trying here is similar to what we did with Android,” Singleton said.
This week: $56M seed led by Index Ventures, co-led by Alphabet’s CapitalG, with Conviction (Sarah Guo). Angels include OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, and Android founder Andy Rubin. Sources put post-money valuation at $500M.
Investors believe capable agents are near — but infrastructure isn’t. Backers argue a new third-party OS may be the unlock. Index partner Nina Achadjian: “A brutally hard technical problem and a truly great idea. If anyone can do it, it’s the team that built Android and Stripe from scratch.”
Co-founders: Hugo Barra (CPO; ex-Google Android PM VP, Meta Oculus); Ficus Kirkpatrick (CTO; early Android engineer, Meta AR/VR VP); Nicholas Jitkoff (ex-Chrome lead designer; Dropbox, Figma). CapitalG partner Jill Chase: growth funds rarely back pre-IPO names — “only when the market is generational and the team is exceptional. Here both were obvious.”
First product version targeted early-to-mid next year. Monetization may resemble Android: take rates on commerce on the platform, or user subscriptions.
— END —