Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More. Y Combinator-backed startup Origami Agents raised $2 million in seed funding to build AI research agents that augment rather than replace human sales teams, breaking from the industry trend of AI avatars automating sales roles.The San Francisco-based company, founded just four months ago, has already reached $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue during its eight-week beta period, making it the fastest-growing startup in Y Combinator’s current batch, according to the founders.“Only humans can close big deals, but AI can make them much smarter and faster,” Kenson Chung told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview. The 22-year-old dropped out of University College London‘s computer science program to co-found Origami Agents. The company’s AI agents perform the tedious research work that typically consumes up to three hours of a sales representative’s day.The startup’s early traction offers a stark contrast to heavily funded competitors like 11x and Artisan, which have raised tens of millions to develop AI avatars that attempt to fully automate sales outreach. Origami’s founders argue this approach often results in spam that damages customer relationships.A dashboard view of Origami Agents’ AI system analyzing companies’ digital presence to identify potential sales opportunities through job postings, social media and employee activity

Anonymous social apps are in for a reckoning. Yes, again. This week, University of North Carolina (UNC) System President Peter Hans announced a plan to block the use of popular anonymous social apps on campus, including Yik Yak, Fizz, Whisper, and Sidechat. The ban would impact the 16 universities, like UNC Chapel Hill, NCSU, UNC Charlotte, and others, as well as one public residential high school that comprises the UNC system.In remarks shared in a letter with the UNC Board of Governors, Hans explains the reason for the ban, noting that these small, hyper-local platforms have “shown a reckless disregard for the wellbeing of young people and outright indifference to bullying and bad behavior.”The apps also turn a blind eye to other problems, like sexual harassment, racial insults, and drug dealing, he noted.If you’re not familiar with these apps, you’re probably not the target demographic.Anonymous social apps tend to appeal to younger users and are often used for bad behavior like bullying, harassment, and online abuse. Or as Hans colorfully puts it, the apps are “the modern equivalent of scrawling cruel rumors on the bathroom wall, except now with a much larger audience.”Many of the modern versions of the anonymous social set also narrowly target young people by operating within a five-mile radius of a college or university campus. That leads to large adoption among college students but, because of their use case, they’re often overlooked by college administrators