We could 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 buyers because of its resolution 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 Venture Partners. The firm’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 startup Butterfly Effect’s use of Brower Use in its viral Manus instrument drove consciousness to new heights.
Magnus Müller and Gregor Zunic based Browser Use final 12 months by way of ETH Zurich’s Student Project House 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 knowledge science. Together, based on Müller, they got here up with the thought of mixing internet scraping with knowledge 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 parts 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 number of brokers depend on vision-based methods and attempt to navigate web sites by way of screenshots, and in [the] course of, issues break,” Müller stated. “We convert [websites] into one thing brokers can perceive. This method means we will run the identical duties repeatedly at a less expensive value.”
There’s an rising variety of AI firms that wish to make their brokers work together with web sites extra gracefully, and Müller thinks Browser Use can grow to be a “elementary 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 way in which the web site works on a regular basis, so brokers typically fail on websites like these.”
According to Myers, Felicis has been actively wanting 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 staff — and its open-source-first method — sealed the deal
“We suppose internet AI brokers are the subsequent frontier that basically 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 are principally text-focused within the ever-changing digital panorama.”
