Meta 否认 Muse 未经许可读取用户私信

这家 AI 初创公司Photon如此确信智能体最终会取代移动应用，以至于它为后者举办了一场葬礼——没错，是一场在教堂里举行的真正葬礼，有致辞等等一应俱全。Photon 帮助开发者构建可在 iMessage 和 WhatsApp 上运行的智能体，如今它已获得 450 万美元种子轮融资来开发其产品。据该公司称，此轮融资之前，其注册开发者已超过 40,000 名，营收在短短四个月内增长了 10 倍。

Photon 联合创始人兼 CEO Daniel Tian 表示，“应用葬礼”于 9 月 17 日在旧金山举行，同时也是这家初创公司的开发者日，设有来自 Vercel、Stripe 和 OpenAI 的座谈环节。活动上还摆放了一口真正的棺材，用来装应用图标。

举办应用葬礼这一举动显然带有几分戏谑意味，但 Tian 相信应用时代正在走向终结。“说实话，这还需要一段时间，但我认为，从方向上看，这是不可避免的，”他在谈到从应用到智能体的转变时说道。

正如你可能已经猜到的，这家初创公司背后的核心论点是：用户不再想安装新的应用。相反，他们想要通过自己已经在使用的消息应用（如 iMessage 和 WhatsApp）来使用智能体。

Meta 的 Muse 正在检验这一理论，其应用已飙升至应用商店榜首。但即便 Muse 最终主导了消费者 AI 领域，Tian 仍看到了一个市场，服务于那些希望自己的应用能在消息服务上运行的开发者。这就是为什么 Photon 提供了一套工具包，包括统一的 API、可扩展的渠道框架、命令行界面（CLI）以及可观测性套件。这些工具结合起来，让开发者能够构建和运营一种可在 iMessage、WhatsApp、Telegram、SMS 或 RCS、电子邮件、语音等平台上运行的智能体体验。

Photon 的创意源自联合创始人 Tian 和 CTO Ryan Zhu 在学生时代构建消费者应用的经历，他们常常参加黑客松。每次他们完成一个新应用，都会遇到同一个瓶颈：让人们发现它。通过构建一个在 iMessage 内运行的智能体，他们意识到可以通过一个人们每天都在使用的应用——Apple 的 Messages——来触达用户。

Tian, for instance, had built a bot that would text his friends back as him over iMessage. When he and Zhu made the technology open source on GitHub, thousands of developers adopted it. So they went all in. Tian dropped out of UPenn’s M&T program, and Zhu left high school, later becoming a visiting student at MIT’s Media Lab.

Today, the open source version of Photon still accounts for 98% of its use.

This April, the founders decided to create a managed platform and sell access to it via subscription tiers. This hosted version of the product offers 99.95% uptime, which is much higher than what you’d get if you were just running the open source version on your local Mac for a hobby project. It’s also SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA-compliant, which opens the door to healthcare agent use cases.

To date, the startup’s platform has attracted over 40,000 developer sign-ups and now includes paying clients. (Any usage beyond 10 users requires moving out of the free tier to one of the three paid tiers, we’re told.) The company isn’t sharing revenue figures but said that, in addition to the 10x revenue growth, it’s seeing less than 3% churn, and its messaging volume has grown by 5x in the last month alone.

Customers using Photon include Corgi Insurance; social introductions app Boardy; Gen Z dating platform Ditto; business banking platform Rho; finance AI assistant Fliptexts; AI email client Slashy; and others building agents for fintech, consumer AI, and other vertical use cases.

Photon’s technology integration partners also include companies such as Vercel (Eve and ChatSDK) and Nous Research, whose Hermes agent uses Photon as its default iMessage layer. Photon is also the layer under Tencent’s QClaw and NanoClaw. Plus, Photon has seen framework and infra integrations across LangChain, Mastra, Convex, Render, Railway, and Telnyx, among others.

Vercel is also one of Photon’s new backers. The startup’s seed round was co-led by Gradient and A* with participation from Vercel, HongShan, Z Fellows, Llama Ventures, Karman, and other angel investors.

Tian 估计，无论是托管版本还是开源版本，这项技术都触达了数百万终端用户。

虽然如今 Photon 专注于智能体与人的连接，但 Tian 认为，拓展到连接智能体与其他智能体的市场也有增长潜力。

“我认为，未来智能体将能够为你找到能做正确事情的智能体——所以这将是 A 到 A 的通信层，”Tian 说。例如，如果一个人正与自己的 AI 助手聊天制定旅行计划，智能体可以在需要时引入其他智能体，比如航班预订智能体或酒店预订智能体。“观察整个 A 到 A 到 P（智能体到智能体到人）的空间一直非常有力量，”他补充道。