a16z leads Relay $3.1M funding round

Introducing Relay, the latest entrant to the ever-evolving world of automation. Based in San Francisco, Relay has emerged from an intensive beta-testing period and is ready to compete with platforms like Zapier and IFTTT.

• The Man Behind Relay: Jacob Bank, the man who sold Timeful, an intelligent scheduling app, to Google in 2015, is the driving force behind Relay. After successfully integrating Timeful's technology into Gmail and Google Calendar, Bank is back, wearing the founder's cap for Relay.

• Relay's Mission: Far from being just a Zapier clone, Relay aspires to foster a collaborative workflow experience where diverse stakeholders can synchronize their efforts. It is meticulously designed to reduce manual administrative tasks and streamline recurring processes.

• Funding and Growth: Relay's beta phase was backed by a $5M seed funding from Khosla Ventures. Now, with an additional $3.1M funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

• Workforce Distribution: Relay's team is internationally diverse, with just three employees in the U.S., one in Canada, and seven across Europe, mirroring Google's global approach.

• AI Capabilities: From being a simple "to-do list for repeated sets of tasks", Relay now supports hundreds of integrations and includes an AI assistant powered by ChatGPT. Its AI capabilities extend to suggesting content, extracting information, summarizing notes, and autofilling fields and are used across functions - bug identification for Support teams, summarizing email updates for Finance teams and generating responses for App developers.

Conscious of the apprehensions of letting AI run the show, Relay incorporates human-in-loop approvals, ensuring that no action is finalized without human consent.