AI Agents AI News & Updates

Google Expands Project Mariner AI Agent to Handle Multiple Web-Browsing Tasks Simultaneously

Google is rolling out Project Mariner, an experimental AI agent that browses websites and completes tasks like purchasing tickets or groceries without users visiting sites directly. The updated version runs on cloud virtual machines and can handle up to 10 tasks simultaneously, addressing previous limitations that required users to remain idle while the agent worked.

Amazon AGI SF Lab's Cognitive Scientist to Speak at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Conference

Danielle Perszyk, who leads human-computer interaction at Amazon's AGI SF Lab, will be speaking at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 at UC Berkeley. She will join representatives from Google DeepMind and Twelve Labs to discuss how startups can build upon and adapt to foundation models in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Microsoft Launches Discovery Platform for AI-Assisted Scientific Research

Microsoft has announced Microsoft Discovery, an enterprise agentic AI platform designed to accelerate scientific research processes from hypothesis formulation to analysis. The platform enables scientists to collaborate with specialized AI agents to drive scientific outcomes, though skepticism remains about AI's current capabilities for genuine scientific breakthroughs given past underwhelming results from similar initiatives.

Firecrawl Offers $1M Budget to Deploy AI Agents as Employees, Seeking Human Creators Behind the Technology

Y Combinator-backed startup Firecrawl has posted job listings for three AI agent positions with a combined $1 million budget, seeking autonomous systems for content creation, customer support, and development work. Despite receiving 50 applicants within a week, the company acknowledges that truly autonomous AI employees don't exist yet, and is actually looking to hire the human creators who would develop and operate these agent systems.

Microsoft Adopts Google's Agent2Agent Protocol for AI Communication

Microsoft has announced support for Google's Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol in its Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio platforms. The A2A protocol enables AI agents from different providers to communicate and collaborate across clouds, apps, and services, allowing developers to build complex multi-agent workflows while maintaining governance standards.

Hugging Face Releases Open Source Computer-Using AI Agent

Hugging Face has released Open Computer Agent, a freely available cloud-hosted AI agent that can operate a Linux virtual machine with preinstalled applications including Firefox. The agent can handle simple tasks like web searches but struggles with more complex operations and CAPTCHA tests, demonstrating both the progress and limitations of current open-source agentic systems.

Relevance AI Secures $24M Funding to Develop AI Agent Operating System

Relevance AI has raised $24 million in Series B funding to enhance its AI agent operating system platform, which helps businesses build teams of specialized AI agents. The company reports rapid growth with 40,000 AI agents registered in January 2025 alone and is expanding with new features called "Workforce" and "Invent" for building collaborative agent teams.

Databricks and Anthropic CEOs to Discuss Collaboration on Domain-Specific AI Agents

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are hosting a virtual fireside chat to discuss their collaboration on advancing domain-specific AI agents. The event will include three additional sessions exploring this partnership between two major AI industry players.

AI Startup 'Mechanize' Aims to Automate All Human Labor

Tamay Besiroglu, a prominent AI researcher and founder of the research organization Epoch, has launched a controversial startup called Mechanize that aims to fully automate all work in the economy. The startup is primarily focusing on white-collar jobs initially and has secured backing from notable tech figures, though it has drawn criticism for both its mission and potential conflicts with Besiroglu's research institute.

Google Adopts Anthropic's Model Context Protocol for AI Data Connectivity

Google has announced it will support Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) in its Gemini models and SDK, following OpenAI's similar adoption. MCP enables two-way connections between AI models and external data sources, allowing models to access and interact with business tools, software, and content repositories to complete tasks.