Hone raises $60 million to build AI agents for business operations

Hone, a startup formed by former OpenAI and Cognition employees, raised $60 million in seed funding to develop AI agents for business operations, Bloomberg reported on October 8.

Benchmark and Index Ventures led the round, which valued the five-month-old company at $285 million, according to Hone.

CEO Moritz Stephan, previously Cognition’s chief of staff, said the agents are intended to handle responsibilities over weeks or months while consulting people when needed. The company aims to automate work such as evaluating sales leads.

Index partner Shardul Shah and Benchmark partner Peter Fenton are joining the board. Fenton said Hone is developing cybersecurity guardrails for its agents.

Early customers include Cognition and AI inference startup Modal. Hone’s work with Cognition focuses on go-to-market operations, and Cognition CEO Scott Wu is a personal investor.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.