Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation tool that aimed to become the new Zapier, is shutting down, with some of its staff, including its founder and CEO, joining Google’s Chrome team. Jacob Bank, Relay’s founder and CEO, announced the app’s closure on Monday, stating that paid customers will lose access on September 14. Free users had already lost access as of August 15. The app’s closure was first announced in July. Bank, who previously spent over six years at Google, will rejoin the tech giant as VP of Product for Chrome, where he will lead product and developer relations teams for the browser, according to his LinkedIn. 'I’ve spent my whole career doing one thing: building tools that help people get more done with AI, without sacrificing their personal creativity or insights,' said Bank in a post on X. 'And joining the Chrome team is an ideal opportunity to bring those experiences to many, many more people.' Bank originally joined Google in 2015 after his previous startup, Timeful, was acquired by the search giant. He worked on various products including Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Chat before leaving to launch Relay. Similar to Timeful, Relay offered productivity upgrades via workflow automation, allowing businesses to streamline repetitive tasks like document drafting and copyediting, as well as various project management tasks. TechCrunch reached out to Google and Relay for more information. Just how Bank and others plan to further integrate AI into Chrome remains unclear, though Bank calls Chrome 'a perfect place to collaborate with agents.' The move follows a steady path of AI integration into Google’s user experience. The integration of Gemini into search has fundamentally altered Google’s front end — not to mention the rest of the internet. Gemini has also been integrated into Chrome, where it serves as an optional in-browser assistant. Overall, users seem to be responding well to these integrations, as Google recently reported that Gemini had crested 1 billion users.
Source: techcrunch
