Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation app launched in 2021 with ambitions to be a Zapier-like tool, is winding down operations. In a company announcement shared Monday, founder and CEO Jacob Bank said the app will cut off paid customers’ access on September 14, 2024; free customers already lost access on August 15, 2024. The closure was first announced in July.
Bank and several Relay employees are joining Google’s Chrome team. According to his LinkedIn profile, Bank will rejoin Google as VP of Product for Google Chrome, where he will lead the product and developer relations teams for Chrome.
“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 wrote in a post on X. He added that Chrome is “a perfect place” to bring those experiences to a much larger audience and said the team has “ambitious plans” for helping people work with AI inside Chrome.
Bank previously spent a little over six years at Google. He first returned to the company in 2015 after Google acquired his earlier startup, the scheduling app Timeful. While at Google he held several roles, including product lead for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Chat, before leaving to found Relay.
Like Timeful, Relay focused on productivity gains through workflow automation: the app helped businesses streamline repetitive tasks such as document drafting and copyediting, as well as various project management activities. TechCrunch contacted both Google and Relay seeking further comment.
The move comes amid deepening AI integration across Google products. Google has integrated Gemini into Search, changing the front-end user experience, and has also made Gemini available in Chrome as an optional in-browser assistant. Google recently reported that Gemini surpassed 1 billion users, suggesting generally positive user reception for these integrations.
Exactly how Bank and other former Relay staff will fold Relay’s AI capabilities into Chrome — and which features users might see — has not yet been detailed. Bank said more information will be shared soon.
