Cowboy raises $5M to build a privacy-first app store for AI agents
What's the deal? CowboyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a New York startup building a marketplace for buying and selling AI agents, launched from stealth with $5 million in seed funding and 100 agents on its store, called The General Store.
The round drew investors including NebularDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Compound, Semantic VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, AnagramDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Shine Ventures, plus angels Aashay Sanghvi and Kevin KwokDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The 10-person team is an incubation out of Uncommon ProjectsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a fund of former Snapchat managers.
What's the endgame? Chief executive officer Chad DePue, who previously held engineering roles at WhisperDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, SnapDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Uniswap, wants an agent marketplace that big platforms don't control. Buyers can run locally-hosted versions of agents that don't share credentials back with the creator; sellers get paid without giving up their source code or setting up payments.
Cowboy starts with traders — especially in crypto — who would pay to build or access agents that manage their positions. The store also opens with 10,000 data feeds for developers, plus a test version of Cowboy Chain, a blockchain-based payments network it plans to launch in coming months.
Why now? DePue sees a future where AI agents outnumber humans. "I cannot imagine a world where the two or three biggest app platforms won't eventually use your data to sell you things," he said, framing Cowboy as an alternative to control by AppleDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Google, or the big AI labs.
What could go wrong? Like any marketplace, Cowboy must build demand on both sides at once. At 100 agents and $5 million, the launch is modest beside larger enterprise platforms and security rounds — Google brought partner-built agents into Gemini Enterprise's governed marketplace in April, and AIR raised $50 million in September to vet agents and offer pre-screened components.
The signal: Cowboy sits at the crossroads of two trends: the shift toward "agents as software" and a push to make third-party agents safe to discover and use. Its success will hinge on credible vetting and privacy protections — and on attracting enough buyers and developers to make the market worthwhile.
Read more: upstartsmedia.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
