A startup referred to as Pig.dev that participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch was engaged on a doubtlessly 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 totally totally different: Muscle Mem, a cache system for AI brokers that permits them to dump repeatable duties.
An early-stage YC firm pivoting is nothing out of the extraordinary, after all. What’s attention-grabbing — and what sparked a dynamic dialog on Thursday’s Y Combinator podcast — is that Pig was engaged on pc use, one of many massive 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 device 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 methods to navigate and use the web site.
In the course of the Y Combinator podcast, launched Thursday, companion Tom Blomfield likened Pig to the Browser Use for Home windows desktops. The podcast featured Amjad Masad, the founder and CEO of fashionable vibe-coding startup Replit.
Masad, Blomfield, and YC companion David Lieb have 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 improve.
“The recommendation I’d give founders in the present day is taking both Browser Use or Home windows automation with Pig and making an attempt to use that into enterprise, right into a vertical trade,” Blomfield steered.
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Masad agreed. “The second that expertise works, these two corporations are going to do actually, rather well,” he mentioned.
However alas, Pig’s founder Erik Dunteman has already given up on the concept. In his put up in Might, he defined that he at first wished to run a cloud API product (a standard method of delivering AI tech). However his clients didn’t need that. So he tried promoting it as a dev device. And so they didn’t need that both.
“What customers within the legacy app automation house truly need is at hand me cash, and obtain an automation,” he mentioned. Primarily, they wished to rent a guide to make their desired Home windows robotic course of automations work for them.
However Dunteman didn’t need to do one-off tasks. He wished to construct growth instruments. So he deserted Pig and began engaged on an AI caching device. Dunteman declined additional remark about his choice to ditch Home windows automation, though the Pig.dev web site and GitHub paperwork stay accessible.
Nevertheless, Dunteman did inform us his new device 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 give attention to reasoning for brand new issues and edge circumstances.
“What we’re engaged on now’s 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 informed 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. As an 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 device in Home windows 11 that helps finish customers handle settings.
