A startup referred to as Pig.dev that participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch was engaged on a probably revolutionary thought: AI agentic tech to regulate a Microsoft Home windows desktop.
However in Might, the founder introduced he was abandoning the tech and pivoting his firm to one thing solely totally different: Muscle Mem, a cache system for AI brokers that enables them to dump repeatable duties.
An early-stage YC firm pivoting is nothing out of the odd, in fact. What’s fascinating — and what sparked a dynamic dialog on Thursday’s Y Combinator podcast — is that Pig was engaged on pc use, one of many huge areas that must be solved for brokers to be actually helpful within the workforce. One other firm — and one other YC alum — that’s tackling that for the browser known as Browser Use.
Browser Use surged to reputation when the Chinese language agentic instrument Manus, which relied on it, went viral. Browser Use primarily scans the buttons and components of a web site to show them right into a extra digestible, “text-like” format for brokers, serving to the AI perceive learn how to navigate and use the web site.
In the course of the Y Combinator podcast, launched Thursday, associate Tom Blomfield likened Pig to the Browser Use for Home windows desktops. The podcast featured Amjad Masad, the founder and CEO of in style vibe-coding startup Replit.
Masad, Blomfield, and YC associate David Lieb had been discussing how long-term pc use of hours, relatively than minutes, was nonetheless a stumbling block for brokers. Because the context window for reasoning grows, an agent’s accuracy wavers whereas LLM prices enhance.
“The recommendation I might give founders as we speak is taking both Browser Use or Home windows automation with Pig and attempting to use that into enterprise, right into a vertical trade,” Blomfield urged.
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Masad agreed. “The second that know-how works, these two firms are going to do actually, very well,” he stated.
However alas, Pig’s founder Erik Dunteman has already given up on the concept. In his submit in Might, he defined that he at first wished to run a cloud API product (a typical means of delivering AI tech). However his clients didn’t need that. So he tried promoting it as a dev instrument. They usually didn’t need that both.
“What customers within the legacy app automation area really need is handy me cash, and obtain an automation,” he stated. Basically, they wished to rent a marketing consultant to make their desired Home windows robotic course of automations work for them.
However Dunteman didn’t need to do one-off initiatives. He wished to construct growth instruments. So he deserted Pig and began engaged on an AI caching instrument. Dunteman declined additional remark about his resolution to ditch Home windows automation, though the Pig.dev web site and GitHub paperwork stay out there.
Nevertheless, Dunteman did inform us his new instrument was impressed by the pc use drawback. It’s chipping away at it from one other angle. The concept is to permit the agent to dump repeated duties to the Muscle Mem service so the agent can deal with reasoning for brand spanking new issues and edge instances.
“What we’re engaged on now could be straight impressed by and relevant to pc use, simply on the developer tooling layer. I stay very optimistic for pc use as ‘the final mile,’” he instructed TechCrunch.
That’s to not say that nobody is engaged on Home windows automation.
In all probability the corporate furthest alongside on that’s Microsoft. For example, in April, Microsoft introduced it added pc use tech to Copilot Studio for graphical consumer interfaces like Home windows. That tech was launched as a analysis preview. Plus, earlier this month, Microsoft introduced an agentic instrument in Home windows 11 that helps finish customers handle settings.