Former Android leaders are building an ‘OS for AI agents’

A fresh startup created by former Android leaders aims to build an operating system for AI agents. Among them is Hugo Barra, former Google vice president of product management for Android, who is speaking fresh company – called “/dev/agents” – will revisit the leaders’ “Android roots”.

Artificial intelligence companies are promoting AI agents as the next massive step in AI tools, promising digital assistants that can perform tasks and make decisions autonomously and with little human intervention. Companies like Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI plan to release some version of this concept as a product in the next few months.

“We see the potential of AI agents, but as a developer it’s just too hard to build something good” – Co-founder and CEO of /dev/agents and former VP of Android Engineering at Google, David Singleton he said Bloomberg. He said the industry needs an “Android-like moment for artificial intelligence.”

The company is working on a cloud-based “next-generation operating system for AI agents” designed “for trusted agents to engage with users across all their devices,” Singleton wrote in a statement. write to X. He said AI agents will “need new user interface patterns, a redesigned privacy model, and a development platform that makes it dramatically easier to create useful agents.”

Barra, who serves as director of product at /dev/agents, was a popular Android person at Google, having managed the project since she was a teenager. He later worked for Xiaomi and then as Facebook’s Oculus VR team leader. Bloomberg notes that he and Singleton are joined at /dev/agents by CTO Ficus Kirkpatrick, an early Android engineer who was VP of AR and VR at Meta, and CTO Nicholas Jitkoff, who worked on the ChromeOS project .