August 18, 2026: Relay started with a familiar startup ambition: take a painful part of everyday work, automate it, and build a company large enough to become the next Zapier.
Five years later, that journey is coming to an end. Relay, the workflow automation startup founded in 2021 by former Google product executive Jacob Bank, is shutting down its service. Paying customers will lose access on September 14, while free users lost access on August 15. The company first announced the closure in July.
For Bank, the next chapter leads back to where his startup story began.
Relay’s shutdown shows how quickly the startup game is changing
The founder and CEO is returning to Google as Vice President of Product for Chrome, where he will lead the product and developer relations teams. His move gives the Relay story an unusual ending: a startup built around automation is closing its doors while its founder moves into one of the world’s biggest platforms at a moment when software automation is becoming central to the future of work.
That contrast says a lot about where startups are heading. Relay entered the market at a time when workflow automation was becoming a major software category. Businesses were looking for ways to connect applications, automate repetitive tasks and reduce manual work. Relay focused on tasks such as document drafting, copyediting and project management, positioning itself as a more powerful alternative to conventional automation tools.
The ambition was substantial. Relay wanted to become a new Zapier. The market has since moved into a different phase.
AI has pushed automation from simple rules and triggers toward software that can interpret information, make decisions and complete sequences of work. That shift creates enormous opportunities for startups, while also raising the bar for survival.
For companies such as Relay, the challenge goes beyond building useful technology. They have to establish a durable position before larger platforms absorb the same capability.
Google is already moving aggressively in that direction. Bank spent more than six years at Google after the company acquired his previous startup, scheduling app Timeful, in 2015. During his first stint at Google, he worked across products including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Chat before leaving to launch Relay.
Now he is returning at a particularly important moment for Chrome. Google has been steadily turning Chrome into a platform for AI powered assistance. Gemini has moved into Search and Chrome, while Google has also been developing agent based browsing experiences that can help users complete tasks inside the browser.
Bank has described Chrome as a “perfect place to collaborate with agents.” That could become the most interesting part of his return.
The browser sits at the centre of how people work online. It has access to the applications, information and workflows that users interact with every day. Add increasingly capable software agents to that environment and the browser could evolve from a window into the internet into a workspace where tasks are carried out on behalf of users.
For startups, that creates both an opportunity and a warning. A small company can identify a new behaviour, build around it and move quickly. Once the behaviour becomes valuable, platform companies with billions of users can bring similar capabilities directly into products people already use.
In a message to its customers , Relay web team stated – Relay e sincerely apologize for the disruption this shutdown will cause. We’re grateful for all of the trust you’ve given us over the years. You’ve been generous with your time, feedback, and support, and we’ll really miss working with you.
— The Relay.app team
That dynamic has always existed in technology. The rise of AI is accelerating it. Relay’s shutdown therefore feels less like a simple startup failure and more like a snapshot of a difficult transition. The company entered a promising market and built around a problem that remains highly relevant. The destination changed faster than the startup could establish a lasting position.
For founders, the lesson may be less about avoiding crowded markets and more about choosing where a company can remain indispensable as platforms evolve.
The next generation of startups will likely build around this tension. Some will create entirely new categories. Others will become acquisition targets. A few will grow into platforms of their own. Many will discover that the technology they helped popularise eventually becomes a feature inside a much larger product.
Relay’s adventure ends with its founder returning to Google, while the underlying idea behind the company continues moving forward.
That may be the clearest signal of all. The future of startups could belong to companies that build the next breakthrough before the giants see it coming. The harder challenge will be building enough of a moat to remain relevant once they do.
