Ando, which is building a team messaging platform for both humans and AI agents, comes out of stealth with $20M in pre-seed and seed funding

Your AI assistant can now join team chats and act autonomously, reducing the need for human intermediaries.

Ando, a new startup, has emerged from stealth with $20 million in pre-seed and seed funding to develop a team messaging platform designed for both human employees and AI agents. The company aims to challenge established platforms like Slack by integrating AI agents as direct participants in conversations, rather than just as installed applications. Ando's platform allows AI agents to have their own identities, inboxes, and participate in channels and direct messages, understanding context and even initiating communication without explicit tagging. The funding, led by investors such as Accel, Index Ventures, and Emergence, will be used to expand the team and enhance the platform's capabilities. Founder Sara Du believes this approach addresses the limitations of current communication tools in accommodating the growing role of AI in the workplace, citing the need to eliminate 'meat proxies' where humans act as intermediaries for AI tasks.

Ando's emergence signals a potential inflection point in workplace collaboration, shifting from human-centric tools to platforms where AI agents are first-class citizens. This could fundamentally alter team dynamics and productivity by enabling AI to proactively manage tasks, gather information, and facilitate decision-making without constant human oversight. Companies that adopt such platforms may see significant gains in operational efficiency as AI takes on more coordination and execution work.

The substantial funding for Ando indicates strong investor confidence in a future where AI agents are deeply integrated into daily workflows. This challenges incumbents like Slack and Microsoft Teams, which are retrofitting AI into existing architectures. Ando's AI-native approach could force competitors to accelerate their own agent-centric developments or risk losing market share to platforms built from the ground up for hybrid human-AI collaboration.