Why a Y Combinator startup tackling AI agents for Windows gave up and pivoted

A startup known as Pig.dev that participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch was engaged on a doubtlessly revolutionary concept: AI agentic tech to manage a Microsoft Home windows desktop.

However in Might, the founder announced he was abandoning the tech and pivoting his firm to one thing fully completely different: Muscle Mem, a cache system for AI brokers that enables them to dump repeatable duties. 

An early-stage YC firm pivoting is nothing out of the atypical, after all. What’s fascinating — and what sparked a dynamic dialog on Thursday’s Y Combinator podcast — is that Pig was engaged on pc use, one of many large areas that must be solved for brokers to be actually helpful within the workforce. One other firm — and one other YC alum — that’s tackling that for the browser is known as Browser Use.

Browser Use surged to reputation when the Chinese language agentic instrument Manus, which relied on it, went viral. Browser Use primarily scans the buttons and components of an internet site to show them right into a extra digestible, “text-like” format for brokers, serving to the AI perceive how one can navigate and use the web site.

Through the Y Combinator podcast, launched Thursday, companion Tom Blomfield likened Pig to the Browser Use for Home windows desktops. The podcast featured Amjad Masad, the founder and CEO of in style vibe-coding startup Replit.

Masad, Blomfield, and YC companion David Lieb have been discussing how long-term pc use of hours, slightly than minutes, was nonetheless a stumbling block for brokers. Because the context window for reasoning grows, an agent’s accuracy wavers whereas LLM prices improve.

“The recommendation I’d give founders right now is taking both Browser Use or Home windows automation with Pig and attempting to use that into enterprise, right into a vertical business,” Blomfield advised. 

Masad agreed. “The second that expertise works, these two firms are going to do actually, very well,” he stated.

However alas, Pig’s founder Erik Dunteman has already given up on the concept. In his submit in Might, he defined that he at first wished to run a cloud API product (a typical method of delivering AI tech). However his prospects didn’t need that. So he tried promoting it as a dev instrument. And so they didn’t need that both. 

“What customers within the legacy app automation area really need is at hand me cash, and obtain an automation,” he stated. Primarily, they wished to rent a advisor to make their desired Home windows robotic course of automations work for them. 

However Dunteman didn’t need to do one-off initiatives. He wished to construct improvement instruments. So he deserted Pig and began engaged on an AI caching instrument. Dunteman declined additional remark about his determination to ditch Home windows automation, though the Pig.dev website and GitHub documents stay obtainable. 

Nonetheless, Dunteman did inform us his new instrument was impressed by the pc use downside. It’s chipping away at it from one other angle. The thought is to permit the agent to dump repeated duties to the Muscle Mem service so the agent can concentrate on reasoning for brand spanking new issues and edge instances.

“What we’re engaged on now could be immediately impressed by and relevant to pc use, simply on the developer tooling layer. I stay very optimistic for pc use as ‘the final mile,’” he instructed TechCrunch.

That’s to not say that nobody is engaged on Home windows automation.

In all probability the corporate furthest alongside on that’s Microsoft. As an illustration, in April, Microsoft announced it added pc use tech to Copilot Studio for graphical consumer interfaces like Home windows. That tech was launched as a analysis preview.  Plus, earlier this month, Microsoft introduced an agentic tool in Windows 11 that helps finish customers handle settings.