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

A startup called Pig.dev He participated in the Winter 2025 -Batch from Y Combinator, worked on a potential revolutionary idea: AI Agentic Tech to control a Microsoft Windows desktop.

But in May, the Founder He abandoned the technology and turned his company to something completely different: MemA cache system for AI agents with which they can discharge repeatable tasks.

An early stage YC company is of course not running anything special. What is interesting – and what a dynamic conversation has fueled on Thursday Y Combinator Podcast – Is that Pig worked on computer use, one of the large areas that need to be solved to be really useful in the staff. Another company – and another YC -Aluin – that can be tackled that browser use is mentioned for the browser.

The use of the browser rose to popularity when the Chinese agent toolman, who trusted it became viral. Browser use essentially scans the buttons and elements of a website to make them in a more digestible, “text-like” format for agents, so that the AI is helped how to navigate and use the website.

During the Y Combinator -Podcast, released on Thursday, partner Tom Blomfield Pig compared the use of the browser for Windows Desktops. The podcast contained Amjad Masad, the founder and CEO of the popular atmospheric startup replit.

Masad, Blomfield and YC partner David Liebs discussed how long-term computer use of hours, instead of minutes, was still a stumbling block for agents. As the context window for reasoning grows, the accuracy of an agent stagnates while the LLM costs rise.

“The advice I would give today takes the use of browsers or Windows Automation with pigs and tries to apply that in a vertical industry,” Blomfield suggested.

Masad agreed. “The moment technology works, those two companies are really going to do very well,” he said.

But unfortunately the founder of Pig Erik Dunteman has already given up the idea. In his position in May, he explained that he first wanted to run a cloud -api product (a usual way to deliver AI technology). But his customers didn’t want that. So he tried to sell it as a DEV tool. And they didn’t want that either.

“What users in the Legacy app automation room actually want is to hand me money and receive an automation,” he said. In essence, they wanted to hire a consultant to make their desired Windows robot process automation work for them.

But Dunteman did not want to do one -off projects. He wanted to build development tools. So he left pig and started working on an AI -caching tool. Dunteman also refused comments about his decision to dump Windows Automation, although the Pig.dev -website And Github -documents remain available.

Dunteman, however, told us that his new tool was inspired by the problem of computer use. It is gone from a different angle. The idea is to enable the agent to load repeated tasks to the Mem Service so that the agent can concentrate on reasoning for new problems and edges.

“What we are working on is immediately inspired and applies to computer use, only with the developer tool. I remain very optimistic for computer use such as ‘The Last Mile’,” he told WAN.

That does not mean that nobody is working on Windows Automation.

The company is probably furthest on that Microsoft. For example in April, Microsoft announced The computer use Tech added to Copilot Studio for graphic user interfaces such as Windows. That technology was released as a research review. Plus, Microsoft announced earlier this month An agent tool in Windows 11 This helps end users to manage institutions.