{"id":120936,"date":"2025-09-07T14:36:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T14:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120936\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T14:36:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T14:36:14","slug":"this-startup-just-raised-13-million-to-make-ai-agents-easy-for-any-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120936\/","title":{"rendered":"This Startup Just Raised $13 Million To Make AI Agents Easy For Any Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Think this is nice? It\u2019s a version of the weekly Under 30 newsletter and would be even better in your inbox<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true: Businesses are turning to AI to get things done faster and better.<\/p>\n

Take it from Nick Gomez, the 28-year-old founder of Inkeep, a startup helping more than 200 companies create and use AI agents that can handle everything from writing blog posts to responding to customer service requests. On Friday, the company announced it has raised $13 million in a seed round, led by Great Point Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator, with participation from other investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI agents\u201d have become one of the hottest trends in tech, with a wave of startups (many founded by entrepreneurs under 30) gaining traction and billion-dollar valuations seemingly overnight.<\/p>\n

Decagon, for example, was founded by Jesse Zhang and is now valued at $1.5 billion. It powers AI agents for clients like Duolingo, Hertz and Notion, handling tasks like product returns, subscription cancellations and replacement credit card orders. Meanwhile, ElevenLabs, cofounded by Under 30 alums Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski, is pushing AI even further with real-time voice agents. The company is now valued at $3.3 billion and sells voice AI agents capable of resolving customer issues on the spot.<\/p>\n

Inkeep is a newer player in the space, but it’s already landed major customers, including AI leaders like Anthropic and image generator Midjourney. What makes Inkeep different, according to Gomez, is that it\u2019s designed so that anyone\u2014not just coders, but also a marketing executive\u2014can build their own AI assistant and use it for anything from asking questions about their documents to creating product presentations.<\/p>\n

The company offers a \u201cno-code visual builder\u201d that lets users create AI assistants using plain English, while still supporting a code-based version for developers, allowing for a full-stack platform designed to work across departments.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018AI agents\u2019 is very buzzy, but to 99% of non-developers, AI agents are fuzzy,\u201d says Gomez. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t really reached them in a way that\u2019s tangible because there\u2019s just no platforms that are oriented around support teams, marketing teams, sales teams to be able to create these AI agents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gomez launched the company alongside cofounder Robert Tran and five other engineers from MIT, all under the age of 30. After working in product and development at Microsoft, Gomez joined Y Combinator with the original idea of building AI tools for developers, but that focus quickly shifted. \u201cWhat we learned there is that even with our very technical and forward-leaning customers, they still had this need where both their engineering teams and support teams wanted to control these experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Inkeep\u2019s customers pay for a platform that connects to the entire organization\u2019s internal data and ingests company-wide knowledge. And on Friday, alongside the funding news, Inkeep also launched an open-source version of its platform, allowing anyone to test it out for themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery CEO, every board, every VP knows that they need to incorporate AI in some way to make things efficient, to lower costs, but also make people more productive,\u201d he says. \u201cWhere people struggle today is okay, \u2018What does that mean? How do I actually translate that into something that individual contributors within my company can actually utilize for their jobs and roles?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

See you next week,<\/p>\n

Zoya and Alex<\/p>\n

How Protein-Packed Junk Food Could Make America Fit Again<\/p>\n

Making Gains: \u201cLegendary became a laboratory to see if I could do this again, and do it more cleanly and leanly,\u201d says founder Ron Penna. \u201cMy goal was to build two unicorn companies back-to-back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ethan Pines for Forbes<\/p>\n

Ron Penna has always been all about protein, and he doesn\u2019t care if it comes from cookies or cake. After selling his protein bar brand Quest Nutrition for $1 billion, he\u2019s back with another venture aimed at health-conscious snackers. His latest company, Legendary Foods, is putting a nutritious spin on favorites like donuts and cinnamon rolls\u2014and it\u2019s already bringing in around $180 million in revenue. Read more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lister Lowdown<\/p>\n

-The Forbes Cloud 100 published this week, naming the top companies across cloud computing, with multiple Under 30 companies making the ranks. Those include Sam Altman\u2019s OpenAI, at No. 1, Patrick Collison\u2019s Stripe at No. 3, Melanie Perkins\u2019 Canva at No. 5, among others. Plus, 2025 Under 30 AI honoree Anysphere, run by CEO Michael Truell (who turned 25 this week. Happy birthday, Michael), debuted at a standout No. 8. See the full list here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

-Following the release of Swag, Under 30 lister Justin Bieber\u2019s surprise album from July, the singer has released a second rendition, Swag II, this week. He announced it via billboards<\/a>, lit up buildings<\/a>, and merch drops<\/a> across more than a dozen Instagram posts. But don\u2019t worry, he intermixed some announcement posts for his wife and fellow Under 30 lister Hailey Bieber\u2019s launch into Sephora<\/a> with her beauty brand Rhode.<\/p>\n

-Three out of four U.S. Open women\u2019s singles semifinalists were U30 stars: 2024 Sports honoree Jessica Pegula (who earned $10.2 million in 2024, by Forbes estimates) took on 2024 Europe Sports & Games honoree Aryna Sabalenka ($27.4 in annual earnings) in the first semifinals match. And Naomi Osaka, Under 30 Asia Entertainment & Sports lister and the first Japanese player to win a Grand Slam event, made her way to her first major semifinals since 2021 but lost to American Amanda Anisimova. Up next: Anisimova will take on Sabalenka for the final trophy.<\/p>\n

On Our Radar<\/p>\n

-Vogue is entering a new era, kind of. Longtime editor in chief Anna Wintour announced in June that she\u2019d be stepping down from her top editor role at Vogue (but would keep her title as the magazine\u2019s global editorial director and Cond\u00e9 Nast\u2019s chief content officer). Since then the industry has had its eyes peeled for who\u2019s set to take over next. Enter: Chloe Malle. She was the digital editor at Vogue (overseeing Vogue.com<\/a> and hosting their podcast, The Run-Through), and she wrote that cover story<\/a> on Lauren S\u00e1nchez Bezos on her infamous wedding weekend. Malle will now be the head of editorial content for American Vogue. (Vogue<\/a>)<\/p>\n

-Mental health startup Wondermind was launched by Selena Gomez, her mother Mandy Teefey, and entrepreneur and Under 30 lister Daniella Pierson in April 2022. It was built as a multimedia platform offering tools, resources and community across a newsletter, podcasts, film and TV and more. But just three years into the making, the company has gone through layoffs, late payments to employees, and a list of promised projects that never came to fruition. Here\u2019s a deep dive into the rise and fall, with a brief cameo by this Forbes piece from May<\/a> on the startup. (The Cut<\/a>)<\/p>\n

-American Eagle says the viral Sydney Sweeney ad worked. In fact, the brand\u2019s CMO said on an earnings call this week that \u201cIn just six weeks, the campaign has generated unprecedented new customer acquisition.\u201d Plus, he says that new acquisition is not just coming from one part of the country, but \u201cfrom every single county in the U.S.\u201d (The Wall Street Journal<\/a>)<\/p>\n