Latest news with #GuillermoRauch
Business Insider
06-08-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
An Accel-backed startup CEO says your next user isn't human — and it's changing how software gets built
The future of software isn't being built for people — it's being built for machines, said Vercel's CEO, Guillermo Rauch. "Your customer is no longer the developer," said Rauch on an episode of the "Sequoia Capital" podcast published Tuesday. "Your customer is the agent that the developer or non-developer is wielding." The CEO of the web infrastructure startup, valued at $3.25 billion last year, said code isn't just being written for humans to read or interact with anymore. It's increasingly being written so AI agents can understand, use, and extend it. "That is actually a pretty significant change," said Rauch. "Is there something that I could change about that API that actually favors the LLM being the, quote-unquote, entity or user of this API?" This new AI-first era means software tools may need to evolve based on how large language models interact with them. "LLMs' strengths and weaknesses will inform the development of runtimes, languages, type checkers, and frameworks of the future," Rauch said. Rauch also said that in the AI era, Vercel's newer users — who may not be developers but designers, marketers, or even AI agents — expect things to just work. Developers were used to dealing with errors and "terrible, negative feedback all day long," he said. But today's users have a much shorter fuse when something goes wrong. Still, he sees that as an "amazing pressure" for product builders. "You want something that works 99.99% of the time," he added. Last year, Vercel raised $250 million in a Series E round led by Accel, with investors including Tiger Global and GV. Rauch and Vercel did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Rise of AI agents 2025 has been hailed as the year of AI agents. They could change how the internet works and how apps and software interact with users. Bernstein analysts wrote in February that while websites and apps won't go away, users may no longer interact with them directly. Instead, they will access information, content, and widgets through an AI assistant that becomes "the aggregator of the aggregators." "If it scales and plays out like we think it might, this. Changes. Everything. The aggregators get disaggregated, and much of consumer internet may be structural shorts. Welcome to the Agentic AI era," the analysts wrote. "There's nowhere to hide." But these agents are not perfect. Researchers have warned that agent errors are prevalen t and compound with each step they take. "An error at any step can derail the entire task. The more steps involved, the higher the chance something goes wrong by the end," Patronus AI, a startup that helps companies evaluate and optimize AI technology, wrote on its blog. The startup built a statistical model that found that an agent with a 1% error rate per step can compound to a 63% chance of error by the 100th step. Still, they said that guardrails — such as filters, rules, and tools that can be used to identify and remove inaccurate content — can help mitigate error rates. Small improvements "can yield outsized reductions in error probability," Patronus AI said.
Business Post
13-05-2025
- Business
- Business Post
How a post on X landed this Irish founder funding from some big names in Silicon Valley
Tech How a post on X landed this Irish founder funding from some big names in Silicon Valley Vish Gain 12:33 Ray Fitzgerald (left) met with Vercel founder and chief executive Guillermo Rauch after a post on X about his AI document editor tool.
Business Insider
10-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Check out the exclusive pitch deck that landed no-code AI agent startup StackAI a $16 million funding round from Lobby VC
The startup, StackAI, just raised a $16 million Series A funding round led by Lobby Capital. LifeX Ventures, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, Weaviate CEO Bob Van, Gradient, startup accelerator Y Combinator, and Epakon Capital also participated in the round. Founded in 2022, San Francisco-based StackAI is a no-code platform for companies to develop AI agents that help with business functions. The startup's agents can interact with software such as Snowflake and Salesforce and be customized to complete back-office tasks like data entry, aggregating content, and categorizing information. StackAI was a member of YC's Winter 2023 batch and raised a $3 million seed funding round from Gradient, YC, Epakon Capital, Soma Capital, True Capital Ventures, and angel investors in April 2023. For cofounder Bernard Aceituno, one of the most surprising things about scaling StackAI has been the types of customers that have benefited most from the tech. "We found that sometimes the least technologically advanced companies — construction firms, local governments, and insurance — are the ones that gain the most value from AI agents," he told Business Insider. StackAI may be all about no- and low-code solutions, but Aceituno and his cofounder, Antoni Rosino, are coming at the problem from the opposite end of the spectrum. The pair met while earning their PhDs in computer science and artificial intelligence at MIT. They both graduated in 2022. Aceituno said that on StackAI's backend, the startup was leveraging AI itself to stay competitive as it grows, and as the tech evolves. "We heavily leverage AI for our development — Cursor and our own StackAI Agents to build 100-plus integrations and add new models as soon as they are announced," Aceituno said. AI agents are shaping up to be all the rage in Silicon Valley this year, with plenty of VCs showing a willingness to open their pocketbooks for startups that automate everything from sales calls, to data entry, to coding with AI. In the last month, Reco, which deployes AI cybersecurity agents, raised $25 million from Insight Partners; Artisan, which is replacing human employees with AI agents to complete repetitive tasks, raised $25 million from Glade Brook Capital; and Spur, which uses AI agents to debug websites, raised a $4.5 million seed round from First Round and Pear. Check out the 13-slide pitch deck StackAI used to raise its $13 million Series A funding round. StackAI pitch deck StackAI pitch deck
Business Insider
10-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Check out the exclusive pitch deck that landed no-code AI agent startup StackAI a $16 million funding round from Lobby VC
Agentic AI continues to be a bright spot for VC investing in 2025, and one startup in the space just landed a fresh round of funding to bring no-code agents into the workplace. The startup, StackAI, just raised a $16 million Series A funding round led by Lobby Capital. LifeX Ventures, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, Weaviate CEO Bob Van, Gradient, startup accelerator Y Combinator, and Epakon Capital also participated in the round. Founded in 2022, San Francisco-based StackAI is a no-code platform for companies to develop AI agents that help with business functions. The startup's agents can interact with software such as Snowflake and Salesforce and be customized to complete back-office tasks like data entry, aggregating content, and categorizing information. StackAI was a member of YC's Winter 2023 batch and raised a $3 million seed funding round from Gradient, YC, Epakon Capital, Soma Capital, True Capital Ventures, and angel investors in April 2023. For cofounder Bernard Aceituno, one of the most surprising things about scaling StackAI has been the types of customers that have benefited most from the tech. "We found that sometimes the least technologically advanced companies — construction firms, local governments, and insurance — are the ones that gain the most value from AI agents," he told Business Insider. StackAI may be all about no- and low-code solutions, but Aceituno and his cofounder, Antoni Rosino, are coming at the problem from the opposite end of the spectrum. The pair met while earning their PhDs in computer science and artificial intelligence at MIT. They both graduated in 2022. Aceituno said that on StackAI's backend, the startup was leveraging AI itself to stay competitive as it grows, and as the tech evolves. "We heavily leverage AI for our development — Cursor and our own StackAI Agents to build 100-plus integrations and add new models as soon as they are announced," Aceituno said. AI agents are shaping up to be all the rage in Silicon Valley this year, with plenty of VCs showing a willingness to open their pocketbooks for startups that automate everything from sales calls, to data entry, to coding with AI. In the last month, Reco, which deployes AI cybersecurity agents, raised $25 million from Insight Partners; Artisan, which is replacing human employees with AI agents to complete repetitive tasks, raised $25 million from Glade Brook Capital; and Spur, which uses AI agents to debug websites, raised a $4.5 million seed round from First Round and Pear. Check out the 13-slide pitch deck StackAI used to raise its $13 million Series A funding round. StackAI StackAI StackAI StackAI StackAI StackAI StackAI StackAI StackAI StackAI StackAI StackAI
