We might not have an agreed-upon definition of AI “agent” but, however a mess of startups wish to create “agentic” instruments to automate varied duties on-line. One such agency, Browser Use, has attracted a ton of curiosity from builders and traders due to its answer that makes web sites extra “readable” for AI brokers.
Browser Use instructed TechCrunch that it has raised a large $17 million seed funding spherical led by Felicis’ Astasia Myers with participation from Paul Graham, A Capital, and Nexus Enterprise Companions. The corporate’s funding hasn’t beforehand been reported.
Browser Use, a part of Y Combinator’s 2025 winter batch, has gained notoriety in latest months. Chinese language startup Butterfly Impact’s use of Brower Use in its viral Manus software drove awareness to new heights.
Magnus Müller and Gregor Zunic based Browser Use final yr by ETH Zurich’s Scholar Challenge Home accelerator. Müller had been engaged on web-scraping instruments for years, and met Zunic in 2024 whereas the pair have been getting their grasp’s levels in information science. Collectively, in response to Müller, they got here up with the thought of mixing net scraping with information science to immediate a browser to carry out a job.
Müller and Zunic constructed a Browser Use demo in 5 weeks — and it took off. Subsequently, they open-sourced it.
Browser Use primarily breaks down the buttons and components of an internet site right into a extra digestible, “text-like” format for brokers. This helps the brokers perceive the totally different choices and make selections autonomously.
“Loads of brokers depend on vision-based programs and attempt to navigate web sites by screenshots, and in [the] course of, issues break,” Müller stated. “We convert [websites] into one thing brokers can perceive. This method means we are able to run the identical duties time and again at a less expensive price.”
There’s an growing variety of AI firms that wish to make their brokers work together with web sites extra gracefully, and Müller thinks Browser Use can turn out to be a “basic layer” serving this want. He added that greater than 20 firms within the present Y Combinator Winter batch used Browser Use for their very own necessities.
“There are firms coming to us and saying, ‘What can we do to make it simpler for brokers to navigate our web site?’” Müller stated. “There are websites — for instance, LinkedIn — that change the best way the web site works on a regular basis, so brokers typically fail on websites like these.”
In keeping with Myers, Felicis has been actively wanting on the AI brokers house for the previous a number of years, and Browser Use felt like the best alternative to develop the agency’s portfolio there. She stated that the corporate’s founding staff — and its open-source-first method — sealed the deal
“We expect net AI brokers are the following frontier that actually helps with the end-to-end automation of human duties,” Myers instructed TechCrunch. “[W]eb AI brokers are this dynamic bridge between static pre-trained fashions which can be principally text-focused within the ever-changing digital panorama.”
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