Browser Use, the tool making it easier for AI ‘agents’ to navigate websites, raises $17M

We might not have an agreed-upon definition of AI “agent” but, however a large number of startups need to create “agentic” instruments to automate varied duties on-line. One such agency, Browser Use, has attracted a ton of curiosity from builders and traders because of its resolution that makes web sites extra “readable” for AI brokers.

Browser Use informed Trendster that it has raised a large $17 million seed funding spherical led by Felicis’ Astasia Myers with participation from Paul Graham, A Capital, and Nexus Enterprise Companions. The corporate’s funding hasn’t beforehand been reported.

Browser Use, a part of Y Combinator’s 2025 winter batch, has gained notoriety in latest months. Chinese language startup Butterfly Impact’s use of Brower Use in its viral Manus software drove consciousness to new heights.

Magnus Müller and Gregor Zunic based Browser Use final yr by means of ETH Zurich’s Pupil Undertaking Home accelerator. Müller had been engaged on web-scraping instruments for years, and met Zunic in 2024 whereas the pair have been getting their grasp’s levels in knowledge science. Collectively, based on Müller, they got here up with the thought of mixing net scraping with knowledge science to immediate a browser to carry out a process.

Müller and Zunic constructed a Browser Use demo in 5 weeks — and it took off. Subsequently, they open-sourced it.

Browser Use primarily breaks down the buttons and components of a web site right into a extra digestible, “text-like” format for brokers. This helps the brokers perceive the completely different choices and make selections autonomously.

“Lots of brokers depend on vision-based programs and attempt to navigate web sites by means of screenshots, and in [the] course of, issues break,” Müller mentioned. “We convert [websites] into one thing brokers can perceive. This method means we will run the identical duties time and again at a less expensive price.”

There’s an growing variety of AI firms that need to make their brokers work together with web sites extra gracefully, and Müller thinks Browser Use can develop into a “basic layer” serving this want. He added that greater than 20 firms within the present Y Combinator Winter batch used Browser Use for their very own necessities.

“There are firms coming to us and saying, ‘What can we do to make it simpler for brokers to navigate our web site?’” Müller mentioned. “There are websites — for instance, LinkedIn — that change the best way the web site works on a regular basis, so brokers typically fail on websites like these.”

In response to Myers, Felicis has been actively wanting on the AI brokers area for the previous a number of years, and Browser Use felt like the suitable alternative to develop the agency’s portfolio there. She mentioned that the corporate’s founding group — and its open-source-first method — sealed the deal

“We predict net AI brokers are the subsequent frontier that basically helps with the end-to-end automation of human duties,” Myers informed Trendster. “[W]eb AI brokers are this dynamic bridge between static pre-trained fashions which might be principally text-focused within the ever-changing digital panorama.”