We might not have an agreed-upon definition of AI “agent” but, however a large number 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 buyers because of its answer that makes web sites extra “readable” for AI brokers.
Browser Use advised 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 current months. Chinese language startup Butterfly Impact’s use of Brower Use in its viral Manus device drove awareness to new heights.
Magnus Müller and Gregor Zunic based Browser Use final 12 months by means of ETH Zurich’s Pupil Mission Home accelerator. Müller had been engaged on web-scraping instruments for years, and met Zunic in 2024 whereas the pair had been getting their grasp’s levels in information science. Collectively, in keeping with Müller, they got here up with the concept of mixing internet scraping with information science to immediate a browser to carry out a process.
Müller and Zunic constructed a Browser Use demo in 5 weeks — and it took off. Subsequently, they open-sourced it.
Browser Use basically 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 completely different choices and make choices autonomously.
“A whole lot of brokers depend on vision-based methods and try to navigate web sites by means of screenshots, and in [the] course of, issues break,” Müller stated. “We convert [websites] into one thing brokers can perceive. This strategy means we are able to run the identical duties repeatedly at a less expensive value.”
There’s an growing variety of AI corporations that wish to make their brokers work together with web sites extra gracefully, and Müller thinks Browser Use can develop into a “elementary layer” serving this want. He added that greater than 20 corporations within the present Y Combinator Winter batch used Browser Use for their very own necessities.
“There are corporations 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 way in which the web site works on a regular basis, so brokers typically fail on websites like these.”
Based on Myers, Felicis has been actively trying on the AI brokers area for the previous a number of years, and Browser Use felt like the fitting alternative to develop the agency’s portfolio there. She stated that the corporate’s founding group — and its open-source-first strategy — sealed the deal
“We expect internet AI brokers are the subsequent frontier that basically helps with the end-to-end automation of human duties,” Myers advised TechCrunch. “[W]eb AI brokers are this dynamic bridge between static pre-trained fashions which can be largely text-focused within the ever-changing digital panorama.”