Y Combinator-backed Motion Raises Fresh $38m To Build The Microsoft Office Of Ai Agents 

By nan clip Harry Qi was 23 years old, he had achieved nan benignant of financial occurrence that astir group will ne'er attain: making astir $1 cardinal a year.

He was moving arsenic “a quant” successful his first occupation retired of college. That’s hedge-fund speak for a stock-trading expert astatine a statistical-model driven “quant” fund. But, for illustration galore group who walk their energies pursuing ever much money, he felt empty.

“At immoderate constituent you conscionable want to make a overmuch bigger effect connected this world,” Qi, now 29, tells TechCrunch. 

So successful 2019, he and his precocious schoolhouse buddy, Omid Rooholfada, on pinch Ethan Yu (Qi’s friend from assemblage — besides moving astatine a hedge fund) built an AI calendaring and task guidance app and applied to Y Combinator. They were accepted into nan Winter 2020 batch and promptly discontinue their jobs to spell beryllium founders. Motion has since added a 4th co-founder, early worker Chander Ramesh. 

Over nan adjacent six years, they steadily grew Motion’s mostly master user customer guidelines until, successful May, they launched an integrated AI supplier bundle for mini and mid-sized businesses.

They saw usage of their supplier bundle explode. In 4 months, that conception of their business unsocial grew to complete 10,000 B2B customers, and $10 cardinal successful ARR, Qi tells TechCrunch. 

Their maturation led to a five-times oversubscribed $38 cardinal Series C round, led by Stacey Bishop astatine Scale Venture Partners, and a accelerated preemptive C2 information astatine a $550 cardinal post-money valuation. 

The startup has raised $75 cardinal to day from investors for illustration HOF Capital, 468 Capital, and SignalFire pinch information from Valor Equity Partners, Fellows Fund, Leonis Capital, and immoderate different large names, for illustration nan Altman brothers’ money Apollo Projects. Y Combinator has invested successful each information arsenic well, Qi says.

The institution is doing truthful good that Ashutosh Desai, Qi’s executive coach from his YC days, and a YC advisor, joined arsenic a full-timer arsenic well. 

Motion is specifically geared toward small-mid-sized businesses that don’t person bazillion-dollar budgets to civilization constitute and train their ain agents.

Its entreaty is that each agentic functions (each pinch a different quality name) are integrated pinch nan others. So acold nan suite includes an “executive assistant” for automating scheduling, statement taking, email replies; a income rep; customer support rep; and a blog- and social-media-post penning trading assistant.

The agents besides merge pinch hundreds of different emblematic SMB devices for illustration Slack, Google Apps, Teams, Salesforce, etc. Motion charges via usage: a guidelines group of credits, positive further credits arsenic needed, depending connected nan number of agents uses. Prices scope from $29 per period for 1 seat, 1,000 credits and constricted supplier functions, to $600 for 25 seats and each agents, 250,000 credits. Then civilization pricing from there.

Qi views Motion for illustration building nan agentic balanced of Microsoft Office. “There’s an opportunity present to build nan adjacent Microsoft,” he said. “You fundamentally person to build each nan applications.” This is successful opposition to buying constituent AI products — a income rep, a customer work bot, a blog-writing 1 — that don’t activity together.

Despite nan admitted “stress” he endures arsenic a laminitis building successful AI’s fast-changing field, he says he wouldn’t spell backmost to his aged life. He’s connected a texting-friends ground pinch galore of his customers and each time 1 of them tells him really Motion makes their lives easier, increases their productivity aliases revenue.

“If I’m answering very honestly, financially speaking, it was still a bad decision. I’d astir apt beryllium making location betwixt 3 and 10 cardinal a twelvemonth correct now,” he jokes, while besides noting that his now middle-class, early-stage laminitis income is still comfortable. But he besides dreams of building an enduring company, for illustration a Microsoft.

“Was this nan correct path?” he nods, reasoning of his customers. “What gets you retired of furniture is conscionable knowing you really built thing useful.”