# Relay shuts down; founder Jacob Bank returns to Google as Chrome VP > Source: > Published: 2026-08-17 22:20:53+00:00 [Relay](https://relay.app/?ref=runtimewire) is shutting down, and founder [Jacob Bank (@jebank)](https://x.com/jebank?ref=runtimewire) is returning to Google to lead product and developer relations for Chrome, according to [TechCrunch's August 17th report](https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/17/ai-automation-startup-relay-shuts-down-staff-joins-googles-chrome-team/?ref=runtimewire). Some Relay employees will join him. Free accounts closed on August 15th, while paying customers retain access through September 14th. The move brings Bank back to the institution that shaped both of his startups. He left Stanford's AI Lab Ph.D. program to co-found Timeful, an AI-powered calendar that Google acquired in 2015. Bank then spent a little over six years at Google, including product leadership roles across Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Chat, before leaving in July 2021 to build Relay. Bank is returning with direct experience in the product problem Google is trying to solve inside Chrome: turning AI from a text box into software that can complete work across multiple applications. In [a post on X](https://x.com/jebank/status/2089330659265552665?s=20&ref=runtimewire), he called Chrome "a perfect place to collaborate with agents" and said he plans to help users get work done with AI in the browser. ### Relay's bet on controlled automation Relay began with a narrower workplace coordination thesis. Bank and former Google colleagues had watched teams stitch together calendars, documents, messaging apps and project-management software to run processes that repeated every week or month. Relay initially helped people coordinate those processes, then expanded into a no-code automation product positioned between Zapier's trigger-based integrations and collaborative work-management tools such as Asana. The timing pushed Relay toward generative AI. At its [October 2023 public launch](https://relay.app/blog/launching-relay-app?ref=runtimewire), Relay offered AI steps that could summarize text, classify incoming email, extract information and draft content. Bank's team paired those steps with human approval checkpoints, allowing users to inspect model output before Relay sent a message or changed a business record. That design choice now looks closely aligned with the work happening inside Chrome. Relay treated AI as one component in a structured workflow, with deterministic steps and people retaining control over consequential actions. Bank had argued publicly that fully autonomous agents often waste tokens and produce less predictable results when a process should follow the same plan each time. Relay also emphasized shared workflows. Tasks could be assigned to a person or role, allowing an automated process to stop for an approval, missing information or a judgment call. Relay's examples included employee onboarding, meeting preparation, support triage, document drafting and finance work. Investors backed that approach with seed capital. A [2022 funding announcement](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221011005286/en/Relay-Raises-%245m-to-Tackle-Collaborative-Workflows?ref=runtimewire) said Khosla Ventures led a $5 million round with Neo, BoxGroup, SV Angel and angel investors participating. Andreessen Horowitz led a further $3.1 million investment announced with the 2023 launch. [Relay's company page](https://www.relay.app/company?ref=runtimewire) says it raised $8.2 million in total, although the two publicly announced amounts add up to $8.1 million. Relay did not disclose a valuation. Bank built Relay with former Google product and design colleagues distributed across North America and Europe. [Relay's biography for Bank](https://www.relay.app/blog/author/jacobbank?ref=runtimewire) says he earned a computer science degree from Cornell and studied at Stanford before starting Timeful. The broader Relay group included people who had worked on Gmail, Google Calendar and other Google products, giving Bank a senior team already accustomed to building productivity software together. ### The wind-down is already underway Relay began its shutdown process on July 16th, when it disabled new signups and upgrades and canceled paid subscriptions. Free users had 30 days to export their work before their accounts were scheduled for deletion at 11:59 p.m. Pacific on August 15th. Paying customers received a 60-day transition period ending at 11:59 p.m. Pacific on September 14th. Relay says annual subscribers will receive prorated refunds for unused billing periods. Each paid workspace also received an additional 25,000 workflow steps and 10,000 AI credits per month during the transition. Customers can [export their Relay data](https://docs.relay.app/workspace-and-account/export-your-relay.app-data?ref=runtimewire), including workflows, sequences and MCP servers as JSON files and prompts, run histories and tables. Relay says accounts, stored credentials, authentication tokens and unexported data will be permanently deleted after each transition window. That schedule establishes a full product closure. Relay's service will disappear rather than operate under Google, while Bank and some colleagues move into Chrome. No acquisition terms were reported. ### Chrome is becoming the workflow layer Google has already been turning Chrome into an agent interface. In a [Chrome product announcement](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/chrome/gemini-3-auto-browse/?linkId=44127136&ref=runtimewire), Google described Gemini features that work across tabs and connected applications including Gmail and Calendar. Its Auto Browse preview can complete multi-step tasks such as filling forms, collecting documents, filing expenses and managing subscriptions, with confirmation required for sensitive actions. Those are browser-scale versions of the problems Relay worked on. The browser sees the page, holds the session and sits between a user and most web software. Giving an agent permission to act from that position also raises the same control questions Relay tried to address: when the system should proceed, when it should ask, and how a person can inspect what happened. Bank's remit includes Chrome's developer-relations organization, according to TechCrunch. That adds another layer to the appointment. Agentic browsing depends on websites exposing interfaces that software can understand and use reliably, while developers need predictable rules for authentication, permissions, payments and user confirmation. Bank is joining at the point where Chrome's consumer product ambitions meet the web platform beneath them. Timeful ended in an acquisition and brought Bank into Google for the first time. Relay ends with a shutdown and brings him back with a different set of lessons: how small businesses adopt agents, where automated workflows fail, and why users still need control. Google is putting that experience inside the browser as Chrome moves from displaying work to performing it.