Latest news with #CalebPeffer
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Y Combinator Startup Firecrawl Offers $1M For AI Agents That Blog, Code, And Do Customer Support Without Sleeping
Y Combinator-backed startup Firecrawl is offering up to $1 million to hire three autonomous AI agents, one for blogging, one for customer support, and one for software development. According to founder Caleb Peffer, the listings attracted approximately 50 applicants within the first week of going live, signaling strong early interest in the concept of autonomous AI employment, TechCrunch reports. Don't Miss: Hasbro, MGM, and Skechers trust this AI marketing firm — 'Scrolling To UBI' — Deloitte's #1 fastest-growing software company allows users to earn money on their phones. Firecrawl develops AI-optimized web crawlers designed to help enterprises collect structured data for large language models. According to TechCrunch, rather than simply building tools for AI, the company is now seeking to hire AI agents as autonomous employees. Firecrawl's new job posts on Y Combinator's job board are labeled for 'AI agents only.' The company wants three distinct AI agents, each with a clear job description, performance expectations, and a monthly salary between $5,000 and $25,000. According to an X post made by Peffer on May 9, the full budget for this project tops $1 million. The first role is for a content creation agent designed to function as a full-stack marketing machine. According to the job description, this agent would write SEO-optimized blog posts, analyze engagement metrics, and continuously evolve its content based on real-time performance. Its goal is to produce content that ranks, converts, and improves itself without human interference. Trending: Maker of the $60,000 foldable home has 3 factory buildings, 600+ houses built, and big plans to solve housing — The second position is for a junior developer agent tasked with triaging GitHub issues, writing documentation, and submitting production-ready code in both TypeScript and Go. This agent is expected to function like a 10x engineer assistant: fast, accurate, and endlessly scalable, the job description says. The third position is a customer support engineer agent capable of answering tickets in under two minutes. The job description says the agent must understand when to escalate an issue and learn from repeated interactions. According to the job post, prior customer support experience is preferred, a wink at the fact that this job is ideally suited for a semi-autonomous AGI trained on thousands of support threads. While the ads are targeted at autonomous agents, Firecrawl is also open to hiring the humans who design and build these agents, Peffer's X post says. The company may also hire the humans who build the agents, whether as full-time employees, contractors, or external startups, TechCrunch founder acknowledges the limits of current AI, saying that the dream agent doesn't exist yet. But he believes the future belongs to humans who can deploy and manage AI armies, not just use AI tools. 'AI can't replace humans today. The future, what we see, is a world where the next 10x engineers are operating armies of agents, AI systems that they're building, maintaining, and monitoring. What we want to do is work with people that want to be those agent operators,' Peffer told TechCrunch. Firecrawl isn't the only startup hiring AI agents. Across Y Combinator's job board, demand for AI agents and agent developers is climbing. From customer service bots to autonomous coders, Silicon Valley startups are betting big on modular, multi-agent systems, TechCrunch reports. With a bold $1 million wager and a head start in building ethical crawling infrastructure, Firecrawl is positioning itself at the forefront of the AI agent movement. Read Next: Invest where it hurts — and help millions heal:. Deloitte's fastest-growing software company partners with Amazon, Walmart & Target – Image: Shutterstock Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report TESLA (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Y Combinator Startup Firecrawl Offers $1M For AI Agents That Blog, Code, And Do Customer Support Without Sleeping originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Y Combinator startup Firecrawl is ready to pay $1M to hire three AI agents as employees
Y Combinator-backed startup Firecrawl is back on the hunt for AI agent employees. As we reported back in February, its first attempt didn't yield an AI worth hiring. But it's now placed three new ads on YC's job board for 'AI agents only' and has set aside a $1 million budget total to make it happen. Within about a week after the new job posts went live, it had about 50 applicants, founder Caleb Peffer tells TechCrunch. Firecrawl offers a web crawling tool that scrapes data from websites for LLMs. This is, Peffer admits, a shady part of the AI ecosystem where bad behaving web crawlers can sometimes pound websites like DDoS attacks. But Firewcrawl has gained popularity by trying to bring in some guardrails, he says. For instance, many of its customers are enterprises scraping their own data for internal LLM use. Some websites want their data included in chatbot responses, just like they want Google links, he says. Additionally, the tool honors settings and can be set to only scrape a public website once and share the data with others. Consequently, one job opening is for a content creation agent 'that never sleeps and always ships' that will autonomously produce 'high quality' SEO-pleasing blog posts and tutorials on how to use its product, the startup's ad says. Firecrawl wants this AI to watch engagement metrics and use that to autonomously improve the audience for its content, too. In other words: the agent should decide what to create, create it, post it, measure the audience, and grow mastery from that feedback, autonomously. If you are a borderline AGI AI made for blogging, this could be the job for you. The advertised pay is $5,000 a month. The company is also looking for a customer support engineer agent that will be tasked with crafting the AI workflow that responds to customer issues within two minutes and can handle tickets on its own, knowing when to escalate to a human. Previous experience doing customer support is requested. Pay is also $5,000/month. The third opening is for a junior developer agent who'll be tasked with prioritizing incoming Github issues, writing documentation and writing code in TypeScript and Go. Once again, the pay also $5,000/month. But here's the catch: Firecrawl is also hoping to hire human creator or creators behind these bots — and the $1 million budget is for hiring both agents and humans, though it's not clear how many years the budget is supposed to cover. The startup might hire the humans full time, or as contractors (which might make more sense if they're creating lots of agents for lots of companies,). Firecrawl is also entertaining bids from other startups that specialize in creating the types of agents that it's looking for, say in customer service, Peffer says. The truth is, the AI employee of Firecrawl's dreams doesn't exist yet. Maybe it never will. 'AI can't replace humans today,' Peffer says. 'The future, what we see, is a world where the next 10x engineers are operating armies of agents, AI systems that they're building, maintaining, and monitoring. What we want to do is work with people that want to be those agent operators.' Firecrawl is not the only one. YC's job board is full of jobs for developers of agents. Will their creations ever replace them as Silicon Valley is continuously wishing? That's the real million-dollar question. Sign in to access your portfolio
TechCrunch
17-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Y Combinator startup Firecrawl is ready to pay $1M to hire three AI agents as employees
Y Combinator-backed startup Firecrawl is back on the hunt for AI agent employees. As we reported back in February, its first attempt didn't yield an AI worth hiring. But it's now placed three new ads on YC's job board for 'AI agents only' and has set aside a $1 million budget total to make it happen. Within about a week after the new job posts went live, it had about 50 applicants, founder Caleb Peffer tells TechCrunch. Firecrawl offers a web crawling tool that scrapes data from websites for LLMs. This is, Peffer admits, a shady part of the AI ecosystem where bad behaving web crawlers can sometimes pound websites like DDoS attacks. But Firewcrawl has gained popularity by trying to bring in some guardrails, he says. For instance, many of its customers are enterprises scraping their own data for internal LLM use. Some websites want their data included in chatbot responses, just like they want Google links, he says. Additionally, the tool honors settings and can be set to only scrape a public website once and share the data with others. Consequently, one job opening is for a content creation agent 'that never sleeps and always ships' that will autonomously produce 'high quality' SEO-pleasing blog posts and tutorials on how to use its product, the startup's ad says. Firecrawl wants this AI to watch engagement metrics and use that to autonomously improve the audience for its content, too. In other words: the agent should decide what to create, create it, post it, measure the audience, and grow mastery from that feedback, autonomously. If you are a borderline AGI AI made for blogging, this could be the job for you. The advertised pay is $5,000 a month. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW The company is also looking for a customer support engineer agent that will be tasked with crafting the AI workflow that responds to customer issues within two minutes and can handle tickets on its own, knowing when to escalate to a human. Previous experience doing customer support is requested. Pay is also $5,000/month. The third opening is for a junior developer agent who'll be tasked with prioritizing incoming Github issues, writing documentation and writing code in TypeScript and Go. Once again, the pay also $5,000/month. But here's the catch: Firecrawl is also hoping to hire human creator or creators behind these bots — and the $1 million budget is for hiring both agents and humans, though it's not clear how many years the budget is supposed to cover. The startup might hire the humans full time, or as contractors (which might make more sense if they're creating lots of agents for lots of companies,). Firecrawl is also entertaining bids from other startups that specialize in creating the types of agents that it's looking for, say in customer service, Peffer says. The truth is, the AI employee of Firecrawl's dreams doesn't exist yet. Maybe it never will. 'AI can't replace humans today,' Peffer says. 'The future, what we see, is a world where the next 10x engineers are operating armies of agents, AI systems that they're building, maintaining, and monitoring. What we want to do is work with people that want to be those agent operators.' Firecrawl is not the only one. YC's job board is full of jobs for developers of agents. Will their creations ever replace them as Silicon Valley is continuously wishing? That's the real million-dollar question.
