Insider Brief
- Anon, a developer platform focused on secure AI interaction with online user accounts, announces a $6.5 million funding round led by Union Square Ventures and Abstract Ventures, along with strategic support from key technology leaders, to enable advanced interoperability between AI applications and end-user accounts.
- The platform addresses a major challenge in AI application development by providing a toolkit that removes authentication barriers, allowing AI to perform tasks like sending messages, booking travel, and managing finances on behalf of users, thereby transforming how developers build and deploy AI functionalities.
- With the new funding, Anon aims to expand its services across various sectors by facilitating AI integration for tasks such as recording LinkedIn messages, managing sales orders, and making purchases, positioning itself as an essential infrastructure for enhancing AI-driven automation and user interaction across the internet.
PRESS RELEASE — SAN FRANCISCO/April 24, 2024 — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Anon, a revolutionary developer platform empowering secure AI access and control to user accounts online, today announces $6.5M in funding and a powerful toolkit that unlocks the full potential of AI applications.
Fueled by investment from Union Square Ventures and Abstract Ventures (seed lead investors), as well as early support from Impatient Ventures and ex/ante (pre-seed lead investors), Anon is poised to transform the way developers build and deploy AI. Strategic angel investors in the round include Ryan Hoover (Founder, Product Hunt), Gokul Rajaram (early Google, Square, Doordash), Scott Belsky (founder of Behance; CPO at Adobe), and Amjad Masad (co-founder/CEO at Replit) backing their vision to become the “Integration Platform for the Internet” that provides interoperability between AI and end-user accounts.
Imagine a world where ChatGPT doesn’t just answer your questions, but securely authenticates on behalf of end-users to send messages, book travel, and manage finances. The current landscape of AI applications is plagued by a critical bottleneck: authentication. A lack of available APIs for most sites limits the immense value AI could yield for end-users.
Anon removes this barrier with its comprehensive developer toolkit, empowering AI agents to integrate with the internet on a far greater scale. By empowering developers to create “mini virtual assistants” for specific tasks, Anon will transform the way that users delegate their digital lives.
“There are so many AI developers building game-changing applications that are limited by authentication,” says Daniel Mason, Anon’s Co-Founder & CEO. “We see Anon as critical infrastructure that doesn’t involve AI itself but unlocks tremendous value for our customers.”
To date, Anon has worked with leading AI companies like MultiOn, Delphi, and Personal.ai. The company will continue to provide interoperability for AI companies, but as AI becomes embedded into the internet more broadly, Anon’s mission-set will expand. The team is already starting to work with companies building CRMs to auto-record LinkedIn messages sent to candidates, sales teams to aggregate orders via WhatsApp, personal assistant applications to buy items, as well as book travel and table reservations on Amazon, Uber, OpenTable, and more. The end market for Anon encompasses the entire universe of AI-powered actions, which will reduce friction and improve automation across the internet.
“At USV, we have long believed in the transformative potential of AI agents and bots to revolutionize how we interact with technology,” said Nick Grossman, General Partner at Union Square Ventures. “Anon is building the identity layer necessary to make this vision a reality, enabling developers to create AI applications that can seamlessly take action on behalf of users across the internet.”
As the company emerges from stealth, Anon is also inviting builders of all levels to join the revolution with its new developer documentation.
Anon was founded by Daniel Mason and Kai Aichholz. Daniel was previously a Partner at Framework Ventures and before that co-founded Spring Labs, a $300mm Series B data security and identity company. Kai was previously CTO at Alaffia Health, an AI/ML health tech startup, and before that worked at Amazon and Goldman Sachs after graduating from MIT.
About Anon
Anon is an API to programmatically interact with services that don’t have APIs. This lets developers take “actions” on behalf of end users by leveraging user-permissioned integrations, fully managed using Anon’s infrastructure. Anon has raised $6.5M in funding from USV, Abstract Ventures, Impatient Ventures, ex/ante, and Blocktower Ventures. For more info, visit anon.com.
Contacts
Jenna Birch
Founder & Principal, SISU
[email protected]
