Most AI assistants are built for the edges of life: dinner reservations, flight changes, subscription cancellations.
We think the real opportunity is the center of it. Work fills 8+ hours of most people's day, and that's where Town helps.
We just raised $108M from @ForerunnerVC, @MenloVentures, @a16z, @firstround, and more to go all in.
A few more things we believe:
1. Your context is yours. By default, we never use it to train a model. You shouldn't have to bet on one AI provider.
2. Town uses the right model for each job.
3. AI at work should be for everyone, not just the most technical people on the team.
AI should do more than make each of us faster on our own. Today the bottleneck is each other: waiting on a reply, an updated model, an approval.
So everyone gets their own Townie that knows their people, projects, and voice, and the Townies handle the back-and-forth.
Thank you to @ForerunnerVC, @MenloVentures, @a16z, @firstround, and all our investors, to our team, and to the thousands of businesses who already trust their Townies with their workday. The best part is still ahead.
A few more things we believe: Your context is yours. By default, we never use it to train a model. You shouldn't have to bet on one AI provider. Town uses the right model for each job. AI at work should be for everyone, not just the most technical people on the team.
Town retweeted
The biggest bottleneck at work is waiting on each other.
Today Town is announcing its $108M Series B, co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures, to fix it with multiplayer AI assistants for work.
Most AI assistants are built for one person. Work doesn't happen alone. I think the moat is multiplayer. Everyone at a company gets a Townie. Townies ask each other questions, share only what their person would share, and do the work. The more a team works together, the more useful Townies get.
What's the thing you're always waiting on a teammate for?
Town retweeted
"Right now, AI is a privilege.”
That’s from the essay @TownAI's co-founders wrote when they launched in June. Their point was that AI mostly rewards people who already get it: developers, power users, people willing to spend hours figuring out tools. For most people it remains a distracting chat box with a logo on it.
Town, the company we wrote about this week for our Should You Join series, is an AI work assistant meant for everyone who does work. You connect your email and calendar, and your assistant (a “Townie”) starts learning how you work, like who you write to casually and what your routines are. Then you hand it things in a sentence from Slack, email, or text. “Reply to James.” “Add the numbers from Dana’s email to the Q3 sheet.” It also suggests things it could take off your plate.
Town is building for people outside of tech and the Bay Area, too (small business owners, teachers, busy parents). For a lot of their biggest fans, Town is the first time AI has clicked for them. They're also growing very, very fast.
So, shoud you join? Full essay: nextplayso.substack.com/p/sh…
Thanks to @jgreze, @tonydevincenzi, Kendall Fornaciari, @MikeLyngaas, and Lisa Campbell for chatting with us about Town.
Town made @Forbes' Agentic 20.
They described Townies as an AI coworker, built for the work that lives in your inbox and dies without follow-up. That's just the start.
Work is rarely a solo act, so we're building for teams, too. More soon.
forbes.com/sites/annatong/20…
Town retweeted
If you've ever met the folks who work at Town, you know that the heart and magic of the product comes from my co-founder @tonydevincenzi and his incredible team.
This @arenamag piece by @freeshreeda is special to me because she captures Tony's constant striving for creating a product with a real soul. Take a read.
AI assistant companies are racing to capture market share. @TownAI is betting that its kitschy, Miyazaki-esque agents will win the trust of people who have never heard of weights. Read @freeshreeda's feature in Arena Issue 009: Hello, World.
Town 2.0. We redesigned Town around the simplest way to get help: just ask. Bring in teammates, and your Townie works with theirs.
Did you know? Your Townie can text you your routine results, and the new For You tab suggests to-dos from Slack, meetings, and more. Try it → town.com/?utm_source=x&utm_m…
Your Townie can now shop for you.
Ask for what you need. They find it, fill the cart, and get checkout ready with @link, built by @Stripe. You approve the charge, and Link pays with a one-time card. Your Townie and the merchant never get your payment information and nothing gets purchased until you approve the spend.
Work with fewer interruptions. Your Townie is better at knowing when to ask, so you'll only get approval requests for the things that matter. You still decide what they can do on their own.