Another AI automation startup is calling it quits. Relay, founded in 2021, is shutting down, and founder Jacob Bank is heading back to Google to run product for Chrome.
Paying customers lose access on September 14; free users were cut off on August 15. The closure was first announced in July.
Relay automated repetitive business work – drafting documents, copyediting, project management – and Bank says he will chase the same goal inside the browser.
Bank, who previously led product for Gmail, Calendar and Chat during six-plus years at Google and sold his first startup, Timeful, to the company in 2015, called Chrome “a perfect place to collaborate with agents.”
Google has been folding Gemini into search, Chrome and its productivity apps, and Bank’s arrival points to agents as the browser’s next act.
