Ando Challenges Slack's Dominance with AI-First Team Messaging

Reimagining Workplace Communication

When Sara Du was helping companies build MCP servers in 2025, people kept asking her how they could use AI agents from within Slack itself. But there were a bunch of technical hurdles in the way: moving messages back and forth and getting agents the right context, all without burning through token budgets.

Upon digging into the problem, Du realized that there was a deeper issue that stemmed from how communication platforms were designed. "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."

"The human effectively becomes the messenger between the agent and the rest of the company," she said.

The solution, Du thought, could be a system that eliminates "meat proxies," as she calls the phenomenon of people having to relay AI agents' work to their teams. An ideal system would instead let agents "participate in the shared conversations where work already gets coordinated," she explained. "They should be able to understand why a decision was made, ask a colleague a question, build on another agent's work, and bring in a human when judgment is needed."

Introducing Ando: A Platform for Human-AI Collaboration

Her startup, Ando, on Thursday came out of stealth with an app that sets out to do exactly that: It's a team messaging platform designed for both human and AI workers.

Ando bills itself as a full replacement for Slack or any other messaging platform that companies using AI agents might want for internal communication. The app gives agents their own identities and inboxes and lets them partake in conversations as naturally as people can.

The app has channels, DMs, group conversations, and even live calls that can be transcribed and viewed by an agent, Du said. Agents can browse channels, pick which ones to join, and can even join conversations without being tagged. If a company's agent thinks a human worker needs to be notified of something, it can message them on its own rather than waiting for approvals.

Building the Future of Work

To continue building the app, Ando on Thursday said it has raised $20 million in pre-seed and seed funding from investors including Accel, Index Ventures, and Emergence. Du's idea isn't a new one. Most of the major players in the workplace collaboration space have already built in support for AI agents — Slack, for instance, has turned its native bot into an AI agent, and Microsoft has gone to great lengths to integrate Copilot into Teams in ways that connect to the rest of its Office 365 suite.

But there is still a market for apps to challenge the incumbents given how quickly AI is invading workplaces. Just a few months ago, Twitter and Block co-founder Jack Dorsey announced Buzz, which brings together people and AI agents into one messaging app, though it's more targeted at developers.

Du also feels there's still enough of an advantage in building an AI-agent-native team messaging platform as legacy incumbents try to figure out how to pivot their existing software.

Early Challenges and Growing Confidence

Regardless, she seems to understand that Ando has an uphill battle ahead of it, and said that things were slow in the beginning. "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.

But she said her team knew they were onto something when more and more customers started using Ando for longer periods. With Ando, she started to see that agents could do more than people expect: An agent could notice two conversations being held in different channels about the same problem, and without being asked to, could bring everyone together in a group chat, explain the context, and even suggest a decision.

"That was really delightful for me," she 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."

Global Impact and Strategic Vision

She said Ando is currently working with customers in software, real estate, and finance across 15 countries, though many of the teams it serves right now are small. The fresh capital will be used to hire more people and burn through more tokens, she said.

"I think agents will let very small teams operate at a scale that previously required hundreds of people," she said. "They can take on more of the execution, research, and coordination work, while humans spend more of their time on judgment, strategy, and deciding what should happen next."

Implications for the Future of Work

This development signals a broader shift in how we think about collaboration tools. Traditional platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams were designed with human-to-human communication in mind. But as AI agents become more sophisticated, their role in workplace dynamics is expanding beyond simple automation to active participation in workflows.

Ando's approach addresses what I see as a fundamental disconnect: while AI agents are increasingly capable of complex reasoning and task execution, the communication platforms they work within often fail to provide them with meaningful access to ongoing team conversations. This creates friction that reduces efficiency and limits the potential value these agents can deliver.

What makes Ando particularly compelling is its recognition that the future workplace isn't just about integrating AI into existing workflows—it's about reimagining those workflows entirely, so that AI agents become genuine collaborators rather than tools that sit alongside human workers. This perspective reflects a deeper understanding of how AI adoption will reshape organizational structures and decision-making processes.

Market Dynamics and Investment Landscape

The $20 million funding round demonstrates strong investor confidence in this approach. While many existing platforms have made incremental improvements to integrate AI, Ando represents a more radical departure from traditional messaging paradigms. This is likely what attracted investors like Accel, Index Ventures, and Emergence who are looking for transformative rather than evolutionary opportunities.

In our increasingly digital workplace, the question isn't just about which tools teams use, but how those tools enable different types of workers—both human and artificial—to interact productively. Ando's vision challenges us to think beyond today's solutions and toward tomorrow's collaborative ecosystems where AI agents participate as equals rather than supplements.

Looking Ahead

As we move forward, I believe platforms like Ando will become increasingly important for organizations that want to maintain competitive advantage through smarter use of AI. They're not just about efficiency—they're about creating new possibilities for how teams can operate and make decisions together.

The next few years will likely see continued experimentation in this space, as companies grapple with how best to integrate AI agents into their daily operations. Ando's success may well depend on its ability to demonstrate real value beyond the hype—showing that human-AI collaboration is truly more powerful than either working alone.

What we're seeing here is more than just another tech startup; it's a glimpse into how work itself might evolve as AI becomes an integral part of our professional lives.