Relay, the AI workflow automation startup that launched in 2021 with ambitions to become the next Zapier, is shutting down. According to TechCrunch AI, founder and CEO Jacob Bank announced Monday that the app will cut off access for paying customers on September 14. Free users already lost access on August 15. What makes this more than a routine startup closure: Bank and some of his staff are heading to Google, where he’s taking over as VP of Product for Chrome.
The closure itself was first announced back in July, TechCrunch AI reports. But the destination is the real story. Bank is rejoining Google, a company he spent six years at before leaving to build Relay, and he’ll now lead the product and developer relations teams for one of the most-used pieces of software on the planet.
Who Jacob Bank is
Bank isn’t a stranger to Google. He first joined in 2015 after the search giant acquired his scheduling startup, Timeful. Inside Google, he worked across some of its biggest products:
- Product lead for Gmail
- Product lead for Google Calendar
- Product lead for Google Chat
He left to found Relay, which offered businesses workflow automation for repetitive tasks like document drafting, copyediting, and project management. Sound familiar? It’s the same productivity thread he’s pulled his entire career. “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,” Bank said in a post on X, as quoted by TechCrunch AI. He called joining Chrome “an ideal opportunity to bring those experiences to many, many more people.”
Why this matters
What stands out here is where AI automation is landing. Relay tried to build agentic workflows as a standalone product and couldn’t make it stick as an independent business. Now that same vision is moving inside the browser, where billions of people already spend their day. That’s a very different distribution game.
Bank called Chrome “a perfect place to collaborate with agents,” and hinted at bigger plans: “We have some really ambitious plans to help you work with AI in Chrome to get things done, and I’ll have more to share soon.”
This is significant because it signals where Google wants agents to live. Not in a separate app you have to adopt, but woven directly into the tool you already open every morning.
The bigger pattern
The hire fits a clear trajectory. Google has been pushing Gemini deeper into its core products at a steady pace:
- Gemini in Search reshaped Google’s front end and rippled across the open web
- Gemini now runs inside Chrome as an optional in-browser assistant
- Google recently reported Gemini crossed 1 billion users
Bringing in someone who spent years building AI-powered productivity tools, and who just ran a company focused entirely on agentic workflows, tells you Chrome’s assistant is about to get more capable and more central. The optional sidebar assistant is likely just the starting point.
There’s also a competitive read here. Browsers are quietly becoming the next battleground for AI agents. Perplexity, OpenAI, and others have been circling the idea of an AI-native browsing experience. Google owns the browser with the largest market share, and it’s now putting a dedicated agentic-workflow builder in charge of its product direction. That’s not a coincidence.
What to watch next
- Relay customers need to migrate off before September 14. If you built automations there, start planning now.
- Chrome’s roadmap. Expect agent features that go beyond a chat sidebar, likely tools that can act across tabs and complete multi-step tasks.
- The standalone-vs-integrated question. Relay’s shutdown is a data point that pure-play AI automation startups face real pressure once the platform giants build the same thing into software people already use.
Google and Relay were both contacted for more details, according to TechCrunch AI. Bank promised more news soon, and given his new perch, whatever ships next will reach a lot of people fast. You can find the full details at the original source.