Dead AI agent products.
$526M of capital across this category
AI agents - software meant to act on a user's behalf, take steps, complete tasks. The category that has been five years from working since 2014. Adept ($415M, founders to Amazon), x.ai's Amy and Andrew (a decade too early on model quality), Amazon Astro for Business (bricked after ten months), GameOn (collapsed in a $60 million fraud). Our essay on the agent that was always five years away traces why this category has stayed perpetually almost-working, from email schedulers to the AI chiefs of staff of 2025, and why the products that propped themselves up with humans were the ones that could not last.
Hiro
2023 - 2026A "personal AI CFO" that modeled income, debt, and expenses, acqui-hired into OpenAI five months after launch.
Undisclosed raised · 3 years alivetheGist
2022 - 2025An AI assistant that read across Slack, email, and CRM to hand knowledge workers one prioritized digest a day.
$7M raised · 4 years aliveAstra
2023 - 2025An AI chief of staff for sales reps that promised to automate most of an account executive's grunt work.
Undisclosed raised · 3 years aliveFiggs AI
2023 - 2024A free roleplay chatbot platform where users built custom AI characters for open-ended conversations and interactive fiction.
Undisclosed raised · 1 year aliveAmazon Astro for Business
2023 - 2024A roving security-guard version of Amazon's Astro home robot, sold to small businesses.
Undisclosed raised · 1 year aliveMeta AI Celebrity Personas
2023 - 2024A lineup of 28 Meta chatbots dressed in the names and faces of celebrities like Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg, and Paris Hilton.
Undisclosed raised · 1 year aliveGameOn
2014 - 2024A sports-focused AI chatbot platform that powered fan conversations for the NBA, Arsenal, and the Las Vegas Raiders.
$60M raised · 11 years aliveAdept AI
2022 - 2024An agent startup training large models to operate existing software and APIs on behalf of knowledge workers.
$415M raised · 2 years alivex.ai (Amy and Andrew)
2014 - 2021AI scheduling assistants Amy and Andrew Ingram that handled meeting coordination over email, one of the first widely deployed autonomous agent products. Not the Elon Musk xAI.
$44M raised · 8 years aliveFacebook M
2015 - 2018Facebook's Messenger concierge, a personal assistant that mixed AI with human contractors to book tables, order gifts, and plan trips.
Undisclosed raised · 2 years alive