Startup Ando challenges Slack with messaging app built for humans and AI agents alike
Startup Ando has emerged from stealth with a team messaging platform that lets AI agents participate in conversations as full members rather than installed apps, backed by $20 million in early funding.
Sara Du, who spent 2025 helping companies build MCP servers, kept fielding questions about how to use AI agents directly within Slack. Digging into the problem, she concluded that existing communication platforms were built for an era that is fading — one where agents are treated as apps to install rather than participants on a team.
Du's idea was to build a system that removes the need for humans to act as "meat proxies," relaying an agent's work to the rest of a company. Instead, agents should be able to join the same conversations where work gets coordinated, understand why decisions were made, ask colleagues questions, build on other agents' work, and loop in a human when judgment is needed.
The new platform
On Thursday, Du's startup Ando came out of stealth with an app built for both human and AI workers, positioned as a full replacement for Slack or similar messaging tools. Agents get their own identities and inboxes, can join channels and group conversations, and can even follow transcripts of live calls. If an agent decides a human needs to know something, it can send that message directly without waiting for approval.
Ando has raised $20 million in pre-seed and seed funding from investors including Accel, Index Ventures and Emergence.
A crowded field
The concept isn't entirely new — Slack and Microsoft Teams have both added AI agent capabilities to their platforms, and Jack Dorsey recently unveiled a similar tool called Buzz, aimed more at developers. Du believes there's still room to compete by building a platform designed for agents from the ground up, rather than retrofitting one.
Du said early reactions were lukewarm, with the app initially seen as just a clunkier messaging tool, but usage grew as customers stuck with it longer. Ando currently serves customers in software, real estate and finance across 15 countries, mostly working with small teams. The new funding will go toward hiring and covering the costs of running the agents.
