These days, it seems like every tech company and startup is working on an AI agent or program that can complete complex tasks with little to no human intervention. When they become accessible, these agents will have a lot of complicated tasks to accomplish, like making hotel and trip reservations and payments.
The founders of the new business /dev/agents, who were instrumental in creating Android in the early days of smartphones, feel that a new OS is necessary to unleash the full potential of AI agents.
Android co-founder and CEO David Singleton (shown above) stated, “As a developer, it was just too hard to build anything on mobile before Android.” However, everyone could see the potential of mobile before Android. “Here we go again with the same old thing. We can perceive AI’s potential, but it’s incredibly challenging to create high-quality code.
Before he launched /dev/agents, Singleton oversaw AndroidWear at Google and was chief technology officer of Stripe. By launching /dev/agents, he aims to bridge the gap between developers and the lack of standard tools and processes for building AI agents. His goal is to create a unified platform that can serve as the AI world’s operating system.
The business boasts that its cloud-based OS will provide individualised user interfaces through the use of generative AI and will be compatible with all devices.
“Our goal is the same as it was with Android,” Singleton explained.
The investors in /dev/agents could feel the same way if you think that sounds good.
The startup announced this week that it has secured $56 million in a seed round. Index Ventures and CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, and Sarah Guo’s venture firm Conviction Capital were the main backers. Among the notable figures who took part in the round were Andy Rubin, co-founder of Android, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, and Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang.
A source close to the investment said that the acquisition was worth $500 million.
Investors abound in the belief that fully-functional AI agents are on the horizon, even if they acknowledge that the necessary technological infrastructure is not in place just yet. Even if several firms are working on various aspects of the AI agent architecture, the supporters of /dev/agents think that a new OS developed by a third party could be the secret to realising their full potential.
Index Ventures partner Nina Achadjian spoke about how she eagerly seized the chance to support /dev/agents.
It’s a huge concept, and it’s a very challenging technical problem,” Achadjian remarked. “However, if I had to choose just one group to accomplish it, it would be the one that created Android and Stripe from scratch.”
Hugo Barra, who was formerly Google’s VP of Android product management and the head of Meta’s Oculus VR group, co-founded /dev/agents with Singleton. Ficus Kirkpatrick, a veteran Android programmer and former VP of AR/VR at Meta, and Nicholas Jitkoff, a former Google Chrome principle designer and senior executive at Dropbox and Figma, are the other two co-founders of the company.
According to CapitalG partner Jill Chase, their business rarely invests in pre-product companies because they are a growth-stage fund. “We will do it when two things are true: first, when the market opportunity is so massive and generational,” she stated. One other thing: the squad needs to be top-notch. That is absolutely crystal evident in this case.
Early to mid-2019 is when the business hopes to release the initial edition of its product.
Regarding the business model of /dev/agents, Singleton stated that it probably won’t be drastically different from Android’s current operating system monetisation strategy.
The speaker speculated that there would be a great deal of trade taking place on the platform. A portion of sales or subscription fees might be collected, he said.
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