Key takeaways
- Relay, an AI automation startup aimed at competing with Zapier, is shutting down September 14 as founder Jacob Bank joins Google to lead Chrome's product team.
- Bank's return to Google signals the company prefers integrating AI directly into existing products like Chrome rather than acquiring standalone automation startups.
- Google plans to embed AI agents deeper into Chrome's core experience as part of its broader strategy, with Gemini reaching 1 billion users across products.
- The browser is becoming the central platform for AI-powered automation, shifting the market away from standalone productivity tools.
Relay, the AI-powered workflow automation startup that launched in 2021 with ambitions to compete directly with Zapier, is shutting down its service. The company will terminate access for paying customers on September 14, while free users already lost access as of August 15. The closure, initially announced in July, marks another exit in the increasingly competitive space of AI-powered productivity and automation tools.
The company’s founder and CEO, Jacob Bank, announced the shutdown on Monday. In a significant career move, Bank is rejoining Google as vice president of product for Chrome, where he will oversee the product and developer relations teams for the browser. His appointment signals Google’s intensifying focus on embedding artificial intelligence directly into its most widely-used products.
Bank’s Exit and Return to Google
Bank posted a statement on X about his decision: “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. And joining the Chrome team is an ideal opportunity to bring those experiences to many, many more people.”
The move represents Bank’s return to Google after launching an independent venture. He initially joined Google in 2015 following the acquisition of Timeful, a scheduling application he had founded. His first stint at Google lasted just over six years, during which he held product leadership roles across multiple core products.
His Previous Experience at Google
During his earlier tenure at Google, Bank served as product lead for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Chat. These roles gave him deep experience in how productivity tools operate across Google’s ecosystem and how users interact with communication, scheduling, and collaboration features. His work on three of Google’s most heavily-used products positioned him as an executive with proven track record in bringing products to scale for billions of users.
His decision to leave Google in 2021 to launch Relay suggested he believed market conditions were right for an independent automation platform purpose-built for AI workflows. The closure of Relay and his return to Google in a more senior role indicate a strategic recalibration: rather than build a standalone competitor, he now leads Chrome’s strategy for integrating AI agents directly into the browser itself.
What Relay Offered and Why It Closed
Relay positioned itself as a modern alternative to established workflow automation platforms, offering businesses the ability to automate repetitive tasks through AI assistance. The platform handled document drafting, copyediting, and various project management functions that typically consume significant time in knowledge work environments.
The Startup’s Market Position
The startup’s mission aligned with a broader wave of AI-powered productivity tools that emerged following the success of ChatGPT and the availability of advanced language models. Like many competitors in this space, Relay aimed to reduce friction in how teams work by automating routine processes and freeing up human attention for higher-value activities.
However, the automation and productivity tool market proved more difficult to dominate than some early investors anticipated. Established players like Zapier maintained substantial market share, while new entrants faced the challenge of competing both on feature depth and integration breadth. Relay’s decision to shut down rather than seek acquisition or continue operating suggests Bank made a deliberate choice to pursue his vision at a larger scale within Google.
Google’s Expanded AI-in-Browser Strategy
Bank’s appointment to lead Chrome’s product team comes as Google accelerates artificial intelligence integration across its portfolio. The company has embedded Gemini, its AI assistant, directly into Chrome, offering users an in-browser AI tool for various tasks. The move complements Google’s broader integration of Gemini into search, which has substantially altered how search results appear and how users discover information online.
Gemini’s Rapid Adoption
Google recently announced that Gemini reached 1 billion users, a milestone indicating substantial adoption of the AI service across the company’s products and platforms. The metric underscores Google’s success in pushing AI-powered features into consumer-facing applications at scale, reaching a quarter of the world’s internet users in a relatively short timeframe.
Bank acknowledged this potential in his announcement, stating that Chrome is “a perfect place to collaborate with agents” — language that hints at ambitions to position the browser as a central hub for AI-assisted work. This framing suggests Google plans to move beyond a sidebar assistant toward deeper integration of AI agents within the browser’s core user experience.
Why the Browser Matters for AI Integration
The browser is a logical foundation for such efforts. It already captures significant user attention during work sessions and sits between the user and external services they rely on. Giving AI agents native access to that environment could enable them to interact with web applications, manage workflows, and coordinate across services without requiring separate tools or platforms. This approach would be fundamentally different from building standalone productivity applications.
What Bank’s New Role Signals for Chrome
In his announcement, Bank indicated that “ambitious plans” exist for how AI will work within Chrome, promising more details soon. His appointment as VP of Product for Chrome, combined with responsibility for developer relations, positions him to shape not only Chrome’s own AI features but also the platform’s approach to third-party developers building tools on top of the browser.
This dual focus — internal product development and external developer relations — suggests Google is thinking about Chrome as a platform for AI automation, not merely a browser with AI features attached. Bank’s background working on calendar, messaging, and project management tools indicates he understands how AI can reduce friction at the intersection of communication, scheduling, and task execution.
The Automation Landscape Shifts
Relay’s closure reflects the rapidly shifting ground in AI productivity startups. The market saw an explosion of automation platforms, AI copilots, and workflow tools following the release of powerful language models. Many of these startups faced decisions about whether to remain independent, seek acquisition, or shut down.
Google’s track record suggests it prefers building AI capabilities into existing, widely-used products rather than acquiring standalone AI applications wholesale. The company has embedded Gemini into search, YouTube, Gmail, and now Chrome. Bank’s move from running an independent automation startup to leading Chrome’s product indicates this may be the company’s preferred approach: hire experienced talent in specific domains and integrate their vision into existing products with massive user bases.
For developers and businesses that relied on Relay, the shutdown requires migration to alternative platforms like Zapier or Make. The September 14 deadline gives paying customers approximately one month to export their workflows and transition to competing services.
AI Agents in the Browser’s Future
Bank’s reference to Chrome as “a perfect place to collaborate with agents” hints at where Google’s thinking is headed. The vision appears to extend beyond today’s chatbot interfaces toward autonomous agents that can work on behalf of users within the browser environment, potentially executing multi-step workflows across multiple web applications.
This vision aligns with broader industry trends. AI companies and researchers increasingly discuss agentic AI — systems capable of planning, reasoning, and taking actions across multiple steps to achieve user goals. A browser-based implementation could make such capabilities accessible to mainstream users without requiring them to learn new standalone tools or platforms.
Whether Bank and Google can execute this vision at scale remains to be seen. But his appointment, combined with the company’s billion-user milestone for Gemini and its ongoing expansion of AI into Chrome, indicates the company views the browser as a critical frontier for the next generation of AI-powered productivity.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is Relay shutting down?
Relay will terminate access for paying customers on September 14. Free users already lost access as of August 15.
Who is Jacob Bank and where is he going?
Jacob Bank is the founder and CEO of Relay. He is joining Google as vice president of product for Chrome, where he will lead the product and developer relations teams.
What was Jacob Bank's history before founding Relay?
Bank worked at Google for just over six years, serving as product lead for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Chat. He initially joined Google in 2015 after it acquired his scheduling application, Timeful.
