Former OpenAI, Cognition Staffers Want AI Agents Running Businesses

A group of former employees from some of the fastest-growing artificial intelligence firms, including OpenAI and Cognition AI Inc., are starting a new company to create AI agents that can help run a business, joining a crowded field of services using the technology to streamline work.

Hone is set to announce Thursday that it has raised a $60 million seed round to develop AI agents that essentially serve as professional staffers, fielding long-running tasks over the course of weeks or even months. Benchmark and Index Ventures led the financing, and the company is now valued at $285 million, according to Hone.

“What we are doing is building AI that owns outcomes,” said Moritz Stephan, chief executive officer of Hone and a former chief of staff at AI coding startup Cognition. Hone’s technology is meant to “look at what a team does, its goals and responsibilities, and deploy engines to own these,” while checking in with a human as needed.

A growing number of companies are selling AI software to businesses that promise to automate complex work, including in coding and customer service. Hone’s ambition is to use AI to have a broader impact on productivity and business operations. For example, instead of building software that can help a sales team gauge the promise of potential leads, Hone believes it can create what it calls an “engine” to do that work autonomously and proactively. The startup is five months old.

“There will be point solutions for particular industries and create a lot of value,” said Shardul Shah, a partner at Index who is also joining the board of Hone. “What Cognition is to software development, Hone can be to every other function in an organization.”

Benchmark partner Peter Fenton, who is also joining Hone’s board, said the startup is working on guardrails to protect customers from any potential cybersecurity incidents involving its agents, a concern following a recent series of security breaches involving AI tools going rogue. As technologies evolve, he said, they need “appropriate immune systems.”

Early Hone customers include Cognition and AI inference startup Modal. The work with Cognition will focus on building agents that help the company with its go-to-market efforts, as Cognition rapidly grows its business. Cognition CEO Scott Wu is also a personal investor in Hone.