Building the Future of Team Communication: Humans and AI Agents Collaborate Seamlessly
In 2025, Sara Du found herself repeatedly answering a common question while helping companies build MCP servers: how could AI agents be integrated directly within Slack? Despite the growing enthusiasm for AI-powered collaboration, there were significant technical challenges to overcome. These included efficiently moving messages back and forth and ensuring agents had the proper context—all without rapidly depleting costly token budgets.
Upon closer examination, Du identified a more fundamental problem rooted in the design of current communication platforms. “The deeper I went, the more I felt Slack and Teams were built for a world that was starting to pass us by,” Du told TechCrunch. “Agents were treated as apps you install even as they were becoming participants in the team.”
Du coined the term “meat proxies” to describe the inefficient phenomenon whereby humans act as intermediaries relaying AI agents’ work to their colleagues. She envisioned a system that would eliminate this redundancy, allowing AI agents to directly engage in conversations and workflows alongside human team members.
The Vision: AI Agents as Active Team Participants
According to Du, the ideal platform would enable AI agents to participate fully in shared conversations where work coordination naturally occurs. Agents would not only understand the rationale behind decisions but would also interact dynamically—asking colleagues questions, building upon each other’s efforts, and involving humans only when nuanced judgment is required.
This vision materialized with Ando, Du’s startup, which recently emerged from stealth mode. Ando is a team messaging platform designed explicitly for both human and AI workers, aiming to replace Slack and similar tools for organizations leveraging AI agents internally.
Ando distinguishes itself by giving AI agents unique identities and inboxes, allowing them to engage in conversations as naturally as their human counterparts. The platform supports channels, direct messages, group chats, and even live calls that can be transcribed and accessed by agents. Agents are empowered to browse channels, choose which to join, and participate without needing to be tagged. When an agent determines a human should be alerted, it can initiate communication autonomously, bypassing the need for human approval.
Funding and Industry Context
To support its ambitious roadmap, Ando has secured $20 million in pre-seed and seed funding from prominent investors such as Accel, Index Ventures, and Emergence. This capital injection will enable the startup to expand its team and enhance the platform’s capabilities, including managing more token usage to improve AI agent responsiveness.
While Du’s concept is not entirely new—major players like Slack and Microsoft have integrated AI agents into their platforms (Slack transforming its native bot into an AI agent and Microsoft embedding Copilot within Teams connected to Office 365)—there remains an appetite for specialized solutions. The rapid infusion of AI into work environments has created space for challengers to rethink collaboration fundamentally.
For example, Twitter and Block co-founder Jack Dorsey recently launched Buzz, a group chat platform designed for teams and their AI agents, though it primarily targets developers. Against this backdrop, Du believes Ando’s ground-up approach offers a meaningful advantage as legacy platforms struggle to pivot from their original designs.
Early Challenges and Promising Adoption
Du candidly acknowledges that early reactions to Ando were mixed. “A lot of people we showed it to early on were understandably unimpressed. It was, in many respects, just a jankier messaging platform. People would get stuck on that before they even got to what was different about the agents,” she explained.
However, as more customers began to use Ando over extended periods, its unique value became apparent. Agents demonstrated capabilities beyond expectations—for instance, detecting parallel conversations about the same issue across different channels, consolidating them into a single group chat, providing context, and even suggesting decisions. “That was really delightful for me,” Du said. “I felt agents could better manage people than humans can because they can process a lot more messages than a human can in a shorter span of time.”
Currently, Ando serves clients in software, real estate, and finance sectors across 15 countries, primarily supporting small teams. Du envisions AI agents enabling these lean teams to operate at a scale previously requiring hundreds of employees by taking on execution, research, and coordination tasks. This shift allows humans to focus on judgment, strategy, and defining the next steps.
As AI continues to reshape how work gets done, platforms like Ando exemplify a future where humans and AI agents collaborate seamlessly, enhancing productivity and decision-making in ways traditional tools cannot match.
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