And a second Kiwi, Victoria University Stats and Economics grad Shine Wu, who earlier won a Robertson Scholarship to study at Duke in North Carolina, joined just months later. <\/p>\n
Yang and Shine – now both 24 \u2013 have known each other since they were in Year 11, aged 15, when they met at the Math Olympiad Camp and NZ Debating Championships, where Yang was representing Auckland and Shine was representing Wellington.<\/p>\n
Composite sounds a lot like an AI agent and \u201cagentic AI\u201d for automating tasks ranging from organising your inbox to online shopping, which is super hot right now.<\/p>\n
But Yang prefers to describe it as an \u201cautopilot for your web browser\u201d.<\/p>\n
In one of Composite\u2019s demo videos, its software is used to research a candidate for a role, including analysing posts on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.<\/p>\n
How can a start-up with a handful of staff compete against agentic web browsers created by the likes of the trendy Perplexity and OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT Agent (which seems like it will shortly be followed by OpenAI\u2019s first web browser \u2013 with another ex-pat Kiwi, Ben Goodger, driving<\/a> the project)?<\/p>\n Yang says his point of difference is that Composite works with your web browser on your desktop, not an AI firm\u2019s browser in the cloud.<\/p>\n He says that means you don\u2019t have to share your passwords to the software you use every day. As long as you\u2019re logged in, Composite can piggyback on your accounts, with all your personal information staying on your device.<\/p>\n Although he\u2019s only 24, Yang has already been able to work connections. Uber was one of the first to use Composite, which comes in a basic free version, plus one that costs US$10 ($17) a month. Other big names, including Tesla, Google, Salesforce and Reddit followed.<\/p>\n Even though it was running in \u201cstealth mode\u201d until just two months ago in a Mac-only beta programme, Yang says Composite now has \u201cthousands\u201d of users. <\/p>\n Yang won\u2019t give actual numbers, but the momentum has been enough to attract some of the biggest names in the business to Composite\u2019s raise.<\/p>\n The funding round was led by Nat Friedman (former CEO of GitHub, sold to Microsoft for US$7.5 billion) and Daniel Gross (a former Y Combinator partner), the founders of NFDG, a fast-growing venture capital fund in which Meta is reportedly pursuing a stake, with support from Menlo Ventures, Anthropic\u2019s Anthology Fund and New Zealand\u2019s Icehouse Ventures \u2013 another early career connection. <\/p>\n \u201cAs a Kiwi, I love being actively involved in the New Zealand startup ecosystem, where Icehouse Ventures is a leading player. I interned with Icehouse Ventures the summer after my first-year at Stanford and, having been on the inside, I know I can deeply trust the team. Trust is the single most important trait we look for in an investor,\u2019 Yang says.<\/p>\n Watches, takes over rote tasks<\/p>\n Composite\u2019s first major upgrade is available from today, coinciding with its funding announcement.<\/p>\n It includes features that watch your actual work habits, detect the rote tasks bogging you down and complete them automatically, Yang said.<\/p>\n \u201cComposite knows what\u2019s weighing you down and completes them on your behalf \u2013 on any website and in any browser.\u201d<\/p>\n A Windows version also launches today.<\/p>\n Foundation and empire<\/p>\n \u201cYang is the type of founder where the first question you ask is \u2018Can we invest?\u2019 and the second is \u2018What are you working on?\u2019,\u201d Icehouse Ventures chief executive Robbie Paul said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd to that first question, indeed, we had to ask. Multiple times. Composite was highly sought-after and attracted investment from pre-eminent investors in their space like Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross.<\/p>\n \u201cI did not need validation that Yang was exceptional, based on the time he spent with us at Icehouse Ventures. Nonetheless, it helped seeing a Stanford CS professor\u2019s effervescent response when I asked about him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere are plenty of super-bright individuals in the world \u2013 but few that have the tenacity and commercial drive of Yang. We look forward to supporting him to build the Composite empire.\u201d<\/p>\n Shine told the Herald that Icehouse\u2019s investment was important for Composite to maintain its Kiwi roots. He says he and Yang see it as part of their mission to raise the profile of New Zealand entrepreneurs\u2019 AI efforts in NZ around the globe – which include everything from Neil Ferguson\u2019s self-driving start-up Nuro<\/a>, backed by billions from Uber and Nvidia, to Nic Lane\u2019s Flower<\/a> in the UK, developing a new, more efficient way to train gen AI to Goodger\u2019s secret project at OpenAI<\/a> to Alex Kendall\u2019s Microsoft and Nvidia backed Wayve<\/a> automotive AI in London.<\/p>\n Quick takes on Composite<\/p>\n Young says \u201cby putting an AI worker directly inside your browser\u201d, Composite:<\/p>\n Predicts your next moves: it detects the specific tasks draining your time and automates them \u2013 instead of bothering you with irrelevant, generic prompts.Works with any browser: it plugs into Chrome, Edge or Comet without the agony of migrating bookmarks, losing extensions, logging into everything again or begging IT for approval.Handles real work: it researches customers or candidates, moves data between tools, updates project statuses, drafts emails based on existing docs and more. Tasks can be initiated with natural language text prompts.Stays out of your way: it appears by hitting Cmd+Shift+Space (or Ctrl+Shift+Space for Windows) for a lightweight overlay, completes tasks, then disappears<\/p>\n While other browsers like OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT Agent and Perplexity\u2019s Comet browser have generated headlines, they are most useful for generic errands like \u201cbook a flight to Paris\u201d rather than the grind of real work, Composite\u2019s founders say. <\/p>\n Composite takes a different approach: it transforms your browser into an intelligent partner that understands your specific workflows and handles the tasks that are drowning you, the company says.<\/p>\n Compsite\u2019s pitch: College-educated professionals spend 85% of their day trapped in digital hamster wheels: they\u2019re drowning in tabs, copying data line-by-line across clunky software stacks, and drafting the same memos again and again. Current \u201cAI browsers\u201d only add friction, forcing users to leave the setups they\u2019re accustomed to and delivering results isolated from the tools – for example, email, Google Docs, Notion – they actually use for their work every day. <\/p>\n \u201cComposite has transformed my daily productivity and remolded what it means to work in Chrome,\u201d said Kailiang Fu, a product manager at Uber. <\/p>\n \u201cComposite lifts from my shoulders what used to take me hours of work per week, such as updating project trackers and running data queries. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat sets Composite apart is how it understands business context across our internal tools and adapts to our actual workflows. This frees me to focus on what matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And a second Kiwi, Victoria University Stats and Economics grad Shine Wu, who earlier won a Robertson Scholarship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[45054,26666,45059,365,9556,363,364,45055,1559,8344,45060,45062,2082,45057,9557,45061,5511,194,807,11927,5338,1132,11692,111,139,69,2515,10710,16801,1037,45056,145,1361,6305,45058,2217,5977,4576,4741],"class_list":["post-52588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-10m","tag-24yearold","tag-96m","tag-ai","tag-artificial","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-automates","tag-called","tag-common","tag-composite","tag-everyday","tag-for","tag-highflying","tag-intelligence","tag-intelligencebased","tag-just","tag-kiwi","tag-kiwis","tag-landed","tag-makes","tag-million","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-raise","tag-resident","tag-silicon","tag-startup","tag-tasks","tag-technology","tag-that","tag-tool","tag-us56","tag-valley","tag-which","tag-work","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}