We could not have an agreed-upon definition of AI “agent” but, however a large number of startups wish to create “agentic” instruments to automate numerous 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 software drove consciousness to new heights.
Magnus Müller and Gregor Zunic based Browser Use final yr by means of ETH Zurich’s Scholar 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 thought of mixing internet 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 basically breaks down the buttons and components of a web site right into a extra digestible, “text-like” format for brokers. This helps the brokers perceive the completely different choices and make selections autonomously.
“A lot of agents rely on vision-based systems and try and navigate websites through screenshots, and in [the] process, things break,” Müller mentioned. “We convert [websites] into something agents can understand. This approach means we can run the same tasks again and again at a cheaper cost.”
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 “fundamental 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 companies coming to us and saying, ‘What can we do to make it easier for agents to navigate our website?’” Müller mentioned. “There are sites — for example, LinkedIn — that change the way the website works all the time, so agents often fail on sites like those.”
In accordance with Myers, Felicis has been actively trying 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 mentioned that the corporate’s founding crew — and its open-source-first strategy — sealed the deal
“We think web AI agents are the next frontier that really helps with the end-to-end automation of human tasks,” Myers advised TechCrunch. “[W]eb AI agents are this dynamic bridge between static pre-trained models that are mostly text-focused in the ever-changing digital landscape.”
