Why Kleiner Perkins’s Leigh Marie Braswell says AI agents ‘don’t work’

December 12, 2024

AI “agents” are on everyone’s lips these days, so it wasn’t surprising that the VCs at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference this week had a lot to say on the topic. One big takeaway: When it comes to the hype, and the fears, of AI agents, investors are still pretty skeptical.

Leigh Marie Braswell, who joined venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins last year to focus on AI infrastructure and machine learning application founders, asserts that “agents don’t work”—at least for now.

“They do not yet work reliably for the vast majority of use cases,” Braswell said during Tuesday’s VC panel. Braswell went on to lay out self-driving cars as the prime example. While autonomous vehicles may be out on the streets right now, she said, they still often need humans to step in and either intervene or guide them.

“Yes, agents can really speed you up,” she said, but they require a human in the loop “for basically all of the use cases.”

Union Square Ventures Rebecca Kaden, who also spoke on the panel, chimed in—saying that AI agents may be consistent 80% or 90% of the time, but “we’re not 100% there…Like in any consumer deliverable, the last 5% matters more than anything else, and I think sometimes we’re under-weighing how far we are from that last 5% to really happen.”

Sarah Guo, founder and managing partner of the venture firm Conviction, said that while she does think AI agents work, she doesn’t think that agents are replacing jobs yet.

“Most jobs are actually quite complicated, and you acquired a bunch of guardrails and evaluations to figure out how to make something work in a real context,” Guo said. But she noted how companies in her portfolio are releasing tools where “you can write an application in natural language and deploy it to the world, and it will be a full fledged application with authentication, without a developer.”

All three of the investors seemed to agree that we will eventually get to the point where AI agents are replacing human jobs. But, as Union Square Ventures’ Kaden put it: “We don’t really know how far away we are from that,” she said.

Jessica Mathews
X: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS

- Ayar Labs, a San Jose-based optical interconnect solutions provider for AI infrastructure, raised $155 million in Series D funding. Advent Global Opportunities and Light Street Capital led the round and were joined by AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, NVIDIA, existing investors Applied Ventures, Axial Partners, Boardman Bay Capital Management, and others.

- Angitia Biopharmaceuticals, a Woodland Hills, Calif.-based musculoskeletal diseases treatment developer, raised $120 million in Series C funding. Bain Capital Life Sciences led the round and was joined by Janus Henderson, existing investors OrbiMed, 3H Health Investment, Yonghua Capital, and others.

- Capstan Medical, a Santa Cruz-based minimally invasive solutions developer for heart valve disease, raised $110 million in Series C funding. Eclipse led the round and was joined by Gideon Strategic Partners and existing investors Yu Galaxy and Intuitive Ventures.

- Upvest, a Berlin-based investment API, raised €100 million ($105.1 million) in Series C funding. Hedosophia led the round and was joined by Sapphire Ventures, existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, BlackRock, Earlybird, and others.

- Veradermics, a New Haven-based dermatologic conditions treatment developer, raised $75 million in Series B funding. Suvretta Capital Management led the round and was joined by Longitude Capital, Surveyor Capital, Osage University Partners, PhiFund, and existing investors JW Childs Associates, Connecticut Innovations, and Vlad Coric.

- One Bio, a Sacramento-based nutrition technology developer, raised $27 million in Series A funding. Alpha Edison led the round and was joined by Leaps by Bayer, Mitsui E12, Morado, existing investors iSelect, Skyview Life Sciences, Collaborative, Acre, and others.

- Albert Invent, an Oakland, Calif.-based materials science research and development platform, raised $22.5 million in Series A funding. Coatue led the round and was joined by TCV, Index Ventures, F-Prime, and Homebrew.

- NeuBird, a San Mateo, Calif.-based generative AI-powered IT operations engineer developer, raised $22.5 million in funding. M12 led the round and was joined by Mayfield, StepStone Group, and Prosperity7 Ventures.

- Vapi, a San Francisco-based voice AI agent deployment platform, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Abstract Ventures, AI Grant, Y Combinator, and others.

- Stigg, a Tel Aviv-based monetization platform for engineers, raised $17.5 million in Series A funding. Red Dot Capital Partners led the round and was joined by Unusual Ventures, Emerge Ventures, Redseed, and Cerca Partners.

- Cofactr, a New York City-based supply chain and logistics management platform for hardware manufacturers, raised $17.2 million in Series A funding. Bain Capital led the round and was joined by existing investors Y Combinator, Floating Point Ventures, Broom, and DNX.

- Mach9, a San Francisco-based automated geospatial data production AI platform for infrastructure providers, raised $12 million in seed funding. Quiet Capital led the round and was joined by Kyle Vogt, Amar Hanspal, Scott Belsky, and Gokul Rajaram.

- Reveal Technology, a Bozeman, Mont.-based defense technology developer, raised $11.2 million in Series A funding. Next Frontier Capital led the round and was joined by defy.vc and 8VC.

- SpotmyEnergy, a Cologne, Germany-based energy metering company, raised €10.5 million ($11 million) in seed funding. Norrsken VC led the round and was joined by Vorwerk Ventures and existing investor Picus Capital.

- Silent Push, a Reston, Va.-based preemptive cybersecurity platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Ten Eleven Ventures and Stepstone Group led the round and were joined by others.

- Embeddable, a London-based embedded analytics developer tool, raised €6 million ($6.3 million) in seed funding. OpenOcean led the round and was joined by existing investors Four Rivers, TechStars, and others.

- LAAM, a Lahore, Pakistan-based fashion marketplace, raised $5.5 million in seed funding. Disrupt.com and Zayn VC led the round and were joined by Graph Ventures, Mentors Fund, and others.

- eSelf, a Tel Aviv-based face-to-face conversational AI agents developer, raised $4.5 million in seed funding. Explorer Investments led the round and was joined by Ridge Ventures and angel investors.

- EzDubs, a San Francisco-based real-time call language translation app, raised $4.2 million in seed funding. Rahul Garg and Neeraj Aror led the round and were joined by Y Combinator and angel investors.

- Pin, a New York City-based AI-powered recruitment platform, raised $3 million in seed funding from Expa Ventures.

- Superform Labs, a New York City-based onchain wealth app, raised $3 million in funding. VanEck Ventures led the round and was joined by Polychain Capital, CMT Digital, Amber Group, and others.

PRIVATE EQUITY

- Patient Square Capital agreed to acquire Patterson Companies, a St. Paul-based dental and animal health distributor, for approximately $4.1 billion.

- Comvest Private Equity recapitalized Bland Landscaping, an Apex, N.C.-based commercial landscaping services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Thermal Technology Distribution Solutions, backed by Gryphon Investors, acquired Applied Thermal Systems, a Brooklyn Park, Minn.-based thermal management products distributor. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Translated, backed by Ardian, acquired a 40% stake in Humans.tech, a Frosinone, Italy-based generative AI-powered interfaces developer. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- ZEDRA, a portfolio company of Corsair Capital, acquired Gryphon, a Beachwood, Ohio-based fund administrator. Financial terms were not disclosed.

EXITS

- Alianza, backed by Realization Capital Partners and others, agreed to acquire Metaswitch, an Enfield, England-based communications software provider, from Microsoft. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Broad Sky Partners acquired Frontline Managed Services, a St. Louis-based managed services provider for the legal industry, from BV Investment Partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.

OTHER

- Bitsight acquired Cybersixgill, a Tel Aviv-based cyber threat intelligence data provider, for $115 million.

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