Relay Shuts Down as Team Joins Google Chrome to Power AI Automation Future

TL;DR

• AI automation startup Relay is shutting down and its team is joining Google's Chrome division in an acqui-hire, with the Relay product set to wind down in the coming weeks.
• Founder Jacob Bank, who previously sold Timeful to Google, will help lead Chrome's push to build agentic AI automation directly into the browser.
• The move signals Google's strategy to turn Chrome from a passive browser into an active AI assistant that can automate complex, multi-step tasks for users.

A Sudden Goodbye for Relay

AI automation startup Relay is officially shutting down. The company announced this week that it will wind down operations and sunset its product after its core team was acqui-hired by Google to join the Chrome division.

Relay, founded by Jacob Bank, built an AI-powered workflow automation platform designed to let users automate repetitive tasks across their apps with natural language. The startup had positioned itself as a next-generation alternative to legacy automation tools like Zapier and IFTTT, using AI agents to handle more complex, cross-app workflows without manual setup.

In a note to users and on social media, Bank confirmed that Relay will cease operations and that customers will be given a window to export their data before the service is fully turned off. While Relay did gain traction with early adopters and knowledge workers looking to automate research, scheduling, and data-entry tasks, the company faced the classic challenges of a crowded automation market and the enormous cost of competing in the generative AI arms race.

Why Relay Closed Its Doors

Relay's shutdown is not a story of failure, but of a strategic pivot driven by scale. Building reliable, agentic automation that works across thousands of websites and apps is notoriously difficult. It requires deep browser-level integration, robust infrastructure, and distribution to hundreds of millions of users — resources that are difficult for even a well-funded startup to secure.

Sources close to the deal indicate Google approached Relay not for its revenue or customer base, but for its talent and technology. The deal is structured as an acqui-hire, meaning Google is acquiring the team and its expertise rather than the Relay product itself, which will be discontinued. No financial terms of the deal have been disclosed.

For Relay, joining Google offers a chance to build its vision at the scale of Chrome's more than 3 billion users, rather than trying to bolt automation on top of the browser from the outside.

Who Is Jacob Bank and Why Google Wants Him

This is not Jacob Bank's first time joining Google. The serial entrepreneur previously founded Timeful, an AI-powered time management and scheduling app that was acquired by Google in 2015. That technology went on to inform features in Google Calendar and other productivity tools.

After Timeful, Bank spent time as a product leader at Google before leaving to found Relay in 2022 with the mission to make powerful automation accessible to non-technical users through AI.

At Google, Bank is expected to take on a senior product leadership role within Chrome, focused specifically on AI and automation. His mandate is ambitious: to reimagine Chrome not just as a window to the web, but as an agentic operating system for getting work done.

Inside Google's Agentic Chrome Vision

Google's interest in Relay makes perfect sense given its recent direction for Chrome. The browser wars have rapidly evolved into AI wars. With competitors like Microsoft embedding Copilot into Edge, and AI-native browsers like Perplexity's Comet and The Browser Company's Dia pushing agentic browsing, Google is under pressure to make Chrome more intelligent and proactive.

Google has already been experimenting with AI in Chrome, including its Gemini integration, AI-powered tab management, and early prototypes of an agent codenamed Project Jarvis that can take actions on a user's behalf, like booking flights or conducting online research.

The Relay team brings exactly what Google needs to make that vision real: expertise in building AI agents that can reliably perceive web pages, reason through multi-step tasks, and take actions safely and accurately. Instead of users manually clicking through workflows, the future Chrome that Bank and his team are building would allow users to simply state their intent — for example, "Find the best hotel for my trip next week and add it to my calendar" or "Compile all the pricing data from these five vendor sites into a sheet" — and have the browser's agent do it for them.

What This Means for the Future of Browsing

The acqui-hire signals a fundamental shift in how Google sees the browser. For more than a decade, Chrome has been a relatively neutral, high-speed container for web apps. The next era is about an active, AI-powered assistant that lives inside the browser itself.

By integrating agentic automation directly into Chrome, Google can leverage its unique advantages: deep integration with Google Search, Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Workspace, plus unparalleled distribution. This could make automation a mainstream, everyday behavior rather than a power-user feature hidden in a separate app.

It also raises important questions about privacy, security, and control. An agent that can see and act on your behalf inside the browser will need strict guardrails, transparency, and user permission models. Google says its approach will be built with user trust and control at the center, but how it balances helpfulness with safety will be critical to watch.

What's Next for Relay Users and Chrome

For existing Relay users, the transition will be short. The company said it will support data exports and help users transition off the platform over the next several weeks before shutting down completely. No direct migration path to a Google product has been announced yet.

For Chrome users, the impact won't be immediate, but expect to see the fruits of this acqui-hire in the coming months. Google is expected to preview new agentic features for Chrome later this year, likely starting as experimental, opt-in features for Workspace and AI Premium subscribers before rolling out more broadly.

Relay may be shutting down, but its core idea — that AI should do the busywork for you — is about to get its biggest platform yet.

AndroGuider Team

Articles written by the AndroGuider team. We try to make them thorough and informational while being easy to read.