Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation startup launched in 2021 with the ambition of becoming the new Zapier, is shutting down — and its founder is heading to one of the most powerful platforms in computing to build the next wave of AI agents.
The company announced Monday that paying customers will lose access on September 14, while free customers already lost access as of August 15, TechCrunch reported. The closure was initially announced in July. The shutdown caps a difficult stretch for workflow-automation startups competing against both entrenched incumbents and AI giants bolting similar capabilities into platforms billions of people already use.
From Gmail Product Lead to Startup Founder — and Back
Jacob Bank, Relay's founder and CEO, revealed he is rejoining Google as VP of Product for Google Chrome, where he will lead the product and developer relations teams for the browser, according to his LinkedIn profile.
It's a homecoming. Bank originally joined Google in 2015 after the search giant acquired his previous startup, the scheduling app Timeful. He spent a little over six years at Google, including as product lead for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Chat, before leaving to launch Relay.
"I've spent my whole career doing one thing: building tools that help people get more done with AI, without sacrificing their personal creativity or insights," Bank wrote in a post on X. "And joining the Chrome team is an ideal opportunity to bring those experiences to many, many more people."
He hinted at what's coming: "We have some really ambitious plans to help you work with AI in Chrome to get things done, and I'll have more to share soon."
The Startup Landscape Is Shifting
Relay offered businesses a way to streamline repetitive tasks — document drafting, copyediting, and project management work — through AI-assisted workflow automation. Like Timeful before it, the product focused on productivity upgrades for knowledge workers. But standalone automation tools face brutal economics when the largest platform vendors give away comparable features.
Bank's move signals where he believes the opportunity now lies. He calls Chrome "a perfect place to collaborate with agents" — a striking framing that positions the world's dominant browser as the interface through which AI agents will act on users' behalf.
The trajectory fits a broader pattern. Google has spent the past year integrating its Gemini AI assistant across its product line, most visibly in Search, where Gemini integration has fundamentally altered the company's front end — and rippled across the rest of the web. Gemini is also already embedded in Chrome as an optional in-browser assistant. Google recently reported that Gemini has crossed 1 billion users.
Browsers as the Next AI Battlefield
The implications of Chrome leaning into agents extend well beyond one startup's fate. The browser is arguably the most valuable real estate in consumer and enterprise software — the place where work, commerce, and communication already happen. If AI agents are going to book flights, fill out forms, manage inboxes, and complete purchases, the browser is where they will do it.
TechCrunch notes that just how Bank and his new team plan to further integrate AI into Chrome remains an open question, and both Google and Relay were contacted for comment. But hiring a proven product leader from the AI automation space to run Chrome's product organization sends a clear signal about the browser's direction.
For Relay's customers, the immediate priority is migration. Paying users have until September 14 to export their workflows and find alternatives before the service goes dark.
For the broader startup ecosystem, Relay's quiet ending is the latest data point in an uncomfortable trend: AI features are rapidly shifting from differentiated products to table-stakes capabilities bundled into the platforms people already live in. Startups that built on top of that shift are finding that the ground moves faster than they can.
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