Backed by A16z, Relay races to market with Zapier in its crosshairs

A new automation startup is setting out to eat Zapier’s lunch, formally launching to the public today after an extended period in beta. Relay, as the company is called, touts itself as a workflow automation platform that helps people tackle mundane, repetitive tasks, going “beyond triggers and actions” popularized by similar rules-based platforms such as […]

Oct 11, 2023

Developers Max Brodeur-Urbas and Rahul Behal think that AI has the potential to automate lots of business-relevant tasks, but that many of the AI-powered automation tools on the market today are unreliable and costly. Part of the problem is that users expect too much of AI, Brodeur-Urbas told TechCrunch — for instance, they assume that it can handle highly specialized, niche workloads where precision matters. “If users ever want to use AI for enterprise purposes, the technology really has to ha

Jan 10, 2025

Back in 2022, João Moura was directing AI engineering efforts at Clearbit, a startup creating a unified hub for business intelligence tools. There, Moura was responsible for leading the development of AI integrations, as well as defining Clearbit’s AI product roadmap. After a year, HubSpot acquired Clearbit, and Moura had the itch to go it alone. He’d founded startups before, including Urdog, which sold a smart collar for pets. But this go-around, Moura had a more technically ambitious concept

Oct 22, 2024

Robotic process automation (RPA) has been a buzzword for a while now, but most of the tools that try to help businesses automate their workflows tend to be generalists. Quandri, a Vancouver, Canada-based startup, is taking a very different approach with its digital workers for the insurance industry. The company today announced that it has […]

Jun 28, 2023