Ando unveils AI-native team messaging app to rival Slack

The newly launched platform lets AI agents act as full participants in company chats, already drawing early users and funding.

Ando, a new startup from founder Sara Du, has launched from stealth with a team chat app built to treat AI agents as first-class participants alongside human coworkers. The platform aims to replace tools like Slack by giving agents their own identities, inboxes, and the ability to read channels, join conversations, and contact people without being explicitly summoned. Ando’s feature set includes channels, DMs, group threads and live calls, with transcripts that agents can consume to follow and coordinate work. Du reports that customers across software, real estate and finance in 15 countries are already using the product, with early use cases showing agents autonomously linking related discussions and proposing decisions. To keep building the product and expand the team, Ando has secured $20 million across its pre-seed and seed rounds from backers such as Accel, Index Ventures and Emergence.