Cowboy raises $5M to build a privacy-first app store for AI agents
What's the deal? Cowboy, a New York startup building a marketplace for buying and selling AI agents, launched from stealth with $5 million in seed funding and 100 agents on its store, called The General Store.
The round drew investors including NebularDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Compound, Semantic VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Anagram, and Shine Ventures, plus angels Aashay Sanghvi and Kevin KwokDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The 10-person team is an incubation out of Uncommon ProjectsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a fund of former Snapchat managers.
What's the endgame? Chief executive officer Chad DePue, who previously held engineering roles at Whisper, Snap, and Uniswap, wants an agent marketplace that big platforms don't control. Buyers can run locally-hosted versions of agents that don't share credentials back with the creator; sellers get paid without giving up their source code or setting up payments.
Cowboy starts with traders — especially in crypto — who would pay to build or access agents that manage their positions. The store also opens with 10,000 data feeds for developers, plus a test version of Cowboy Chain, a blockchain-based payments network it plans to launch in coming months.
Why now? DePue sees a future where AI agents outnumber humans. "I cannot imagine a world where the two or three biggest app platforms won't eventually use your data to sell you things," he said, framing Cowboy as an alternative to control by Apple, Google, or the big AI labs.
What could go wrong? Like any marketplace, Cowboy must build demand on both sides at once. At 100 agents and $5 million, the launch is modest beside larger enterprise platforms and security rounds — Google brought partner-built agents into Gemini Enterprise's governed marketplace in April, and AIR raised $50 million in September to vet agents and offer pre-screened components.
The signal: Cowboy sits at the crossroads of two trends: the shift toward "agents as software" and a push to make third-party agents safe to discover and use. Its success will hinge on credible vetting and privacy protections — and on attracting enough buyers and developers to make the market worthwhile.
Read more: upstartsmedia.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini