When Max Brodeur-Urbas co-founded Gumloop in mid-2023, his vision was to help non-technical employees automate repetitive tasks using AI. At the time, the concept of AI agents was still largely experimental and error-prone.
As AI technology has matured, so has Gumloop’s offering.
The company claims it now enables teams at organizations like Shopify, Ramp, Gusto, Samsara, Instacart and Opendoor to develop reliable AI agents that autonomously handle complex multi-step tasks, all without ever needing an engineer.
Workers can share the agents they build with colleagues, creating a compound effect that accelerates internal automation. “They get addicted, they start building more agents, and suddenly, the whole company is native to AI,” Brodeur-Urbas told TechCrunch.
As companies struggle to adopt AI, Benchmark General Partner Everett Randle believes the key to success lies in empowering every employee with AI superpowers, and Gumloop’s intuitive agent builder is an example of the kind of tool that will unlock that potential.
That’s why Randle, who joined Benchmark last October from Kleiner Perkins, chose to lead a $50 million Series B investment in Gumloop. The deal, which is Randle’s first at his new company, included participation from Nexus VP, First Round Capital, Y Combinator, BoxGroup, The Cannon Project and Shopify.
Although Gumloop wasn’t actively looking for new capital, the startup decided this was the year to “step on the gas.” For Brodeur-Urbas, working with Benchmark – the company behind icons like eBay, Uber and Dropbox – was a “no brainer”.
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While Brodeur-Urbas previously planned to “build a 10-person, billion-dollar company,” growing demand from enterprise customers forced him to build a dedicated sales force and scale his engineering team, he said.
Gumloop is by no means the only player vying to turn every knowledge worker into an AI-creator. The startup faces stiff competition from established automation platforms like Zapier and n8n, as well as niche agent makers like Dust. Even seminal AI labs are getting into the fray. For example, Anthropic’s Claude Cowork allows users to create autonomous agents without writing a single line of code.
But Randle believes Gumloop is superior to all of its rivals. During his due diligence, he discovered that at least one of the company’s customers had adopted Gumloop somewhat organically.
When Randle asked a CTO how they chose Gumloop, the answer was telling. The company had given employees full access to Gumloop along with two competitors. Six months later, staff were using Gumloop daily or weekly, while competing tools remained untouched, Randle told TechCrunch.
The reason Gumloop has gained such momentum, according to Randle, is its minimal learning curve. “You can come in and start building agents and workflow automation right away,” he said.
While many AI startups worry that basic models will replicate the same functionality and make them obsolete, Randle is convinced that Gumloop’s agnostic approach is exactly what will continue to attract customers.
As models continue to evolve, one may perform better than another for a particular task. Thus, Gumloop provides the flexibility to choose the model that best suits the job at any given time.
Another reason model independence is attractive, according to Randle, is cost. “A lot of businesses have OpenAI, Gemini and Anthropic credits. They want to use them all,” he said.
His enthusiasm for the company ultimately boils down to the sheer size of the opportunity.
“Business automation is a huge pot of gold,” Randle said. “I think it’s the biggest category in business AI.”
