Vancouver Startup Gumloop Simplifies Ai Workflow Automation

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 28, 2025, 4:03 PM

vancouver startup gumloop simplifies ai workflow automation

Automate workflows in minutes with ready-made building blocks Let AI route and choose the next best step No add-ons, data subscriptions or per-model fees Consolidate your tools, empower your team Triggers flows from all of the apps you use Developers Max Brodeur-Urbas and Rahul Behal think that AI has the potential to automate lots of business-relevant tasks, but that many of the AI-powered automation tools on the market today are unreliable and costly.

Part of the problem is that users expect too much of AI, Brodeur-Urbas told TechCrunch — for instance, they assume that it can handle highly specialized, niche workloads where precision matters. “If users ever want to use AI for enterprise purposes, the technology really has to have no margin for error,” Brodeur-Urbas said. “Leaving specific workflows completely up to AI is not realistic. Users would be paying for [an AI] to spin its wheels performing the same Google search over and over again.” Still, Brodeur-Urbas, an ex-Microsoft software engineer, and Behal, previously a software developer at Amazon Web Services, thought today’s AI had promising narrower applications. So they started thinking about ways they could squeeze what Brodeur-Urbas called “real value” out of AI tech.

These ideas became a wrapper for the open source app Auto-GPT, then a proof-of-concept, and eventually a startup: Gumloop. Gumloop automates repetitive workflows with AI, aiming to streamline basic tasks. “We started the company in a bedroom in Vancouver as a side project,” Brodeur-Urbas said. “We were trying to solve a very simple problem for a group of nontechnical people in a Discord server, and it spiraled into something larger than we could have ever imagined.” We started Gumloop just over 1 year ago as a side project, building for a small group of users in a Discord community who wanted to use AI to automate their work. It's grown into an AI automation platform that our users' businesses rely on daily and we couldn't be more excited about the direction we're building in.

We're excited to announce our seed round led by First Round Capital with participation from Y Combinator, Max Mullen (Instacart), Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox), Andrew Ofstad (Airtable), Immad Akhund (Mercury), Kulveer Taggar (Zeus), Liquid2, WndrCo,... Gumloop is making it easy for anyone to build powerful AI workflows, no AI expertise or coding needed. Most people want AI to do work for them but to automate anything beyond a single ChatGPT question, you needed to be able to code or to call in someone who did. The people within a business who understand what needs automation don't have the tools or technical background to do anything about it. Only engineers can really make an impact with AI but they're normally busy, detached from the problem and expensive. Daily stocks & crypto headlines, free to your inbox

By continuing, I agree to the Market Data Terms of Service and Privacy Statement Developers Max Brodeur-Urbas and Rahul Behal founded Gumloop, a startup that automates repetitive workflows using AI. Created as a side project in a Vancouver bedroom, Gumloop evolved into a business-focused platform offering drag-and-drop modules for task automation. Brodeur-Urbas, a former Microsoft engineer, and Behal, previously at Amazon Web Services, identified gaps in current AI tools. They believed that many solutions were unreliable and too ambitious for enterprise-level precision. Gumloop was designed to deliver "real value" by focusing on narrower, dependable AI applications.

The platform integrates with tools like GitHub, Gmail, Outlook, and X. Users can build workflows through a visual interface or select prebuilt pipelines for tasks such as generating stock reports or summarizing documents. Companies like Instacart and Rippling have adopted Gumloop for diverse use cases. Unlike competitors like Parabola and OpenAI's agentic tools, Gumloop aims to stay lean. The team will cap its headcount at 10 while leveraging AI to maintain the output of a larger workforce. Brodeur-Urbas envisions Gumloop as a billion-dollar company with a small, efficient team.

Recently, Gumloop raised $17 million in a Series A round led by Nexus Venture Partners, with support from Y Combinator and angel investors. The funding will accelerate product development and the company's move from Vancouver to San Francisco. Developers Max Brodeur-Urbas and Rahul Behal believe that AI has the potential to automate various business tasks, but find many existing AI-powered automation tools to be unreliable and costly. They attribute this to users having unrealistic expectations of AI, such as expecting it to handle specialized tasks with precision. To address the limitations of current AI technology, Brodeur-Urbas and Behal founded Gumloop, a startup that focuses on automating repetitive workflows with AI to simplify basic tasks. Starting as a side project in a Vancouver bedroom, Gumloop has since grown into a platform used by thousands of users for various business needs.

Gumloop provides a workflow builder that integrates with popular apps like GitHub, Gmail, and Outlook. Users can drag and drop modular components to create automations or choose from prebuilt pipelines for tasks like generating reports and summarizing documents. The company has gained traction among teams at Instacart and Rippling, showcasing its usefulness in different use cases. Despite the abundance of workflow automation tools in the market, Gumloop aims to differentiate itself by offering a simple yet effective solution for nontechnical users. With a lean team structure and a focus on efficiency, Gumloop plans to stay agile as it continues to grow and evolve. The company recently raised $17 million in a Series A round led by Nexus Venture Partners, signaling strong support for its vision in the tech industry.

AI automation was supposed to make life easier. For most people, it just made things confusing. Until now. Here's the scene: A small business owner scrolling through LinkedIn at 11 PM, watching yet another tech influencer demo their "fully automated" lead generation system. It looks incredible. Leads flow in automatically, emails write themselves, data organizes itself into beautiful spreadsheets.

That demo requires connecting five different tools, writing custom code, and understanding what an "API webhook" is. Might as well ask someone to rewire their house while they're at it. This is the dirty secret of automation in 2025. The promise is everywhere—"AI will do your work for you!"—but the actual implementation? Reserved for developers or people with endless patience for YouTube tutorials. It's like being handed the keys to a Tesla but realizing nobody taught you how to drive.

Developers Max Brodeur-Urbas and Rahul Behal think that AI has the potential to automate lots of business-relevant tasks, but that many of the AI-powered automation tools on the market today are unreliable and costly. Part of the problem is that users expect too much of AI, Brodeur-Urbas told TechCrunch — for instance, they assume that it can handle highly specialized, niche workloads where precision matters. “If users ever want to use AI for enterprise purposes, the technology really has to have no margin for error,” Brodeur-Urbas said. “Leaving specific workflows completely up to AI is not realistic. Users would be paying for [an AI] to spin its wheels performing the same Google search over and over again.” Still, Brodeur-Urbas, an ex-Microsoft software engineer, and Behal, previously a software developer at Amazon Web Services, thought today’s AI had promising narrower applications.

So they started thinking about ways they could squeeze what Brodeur-Urbas called “real value” out of AI tech. These ideas became a wrapper for the open source app Auto-GPT, then a proof-of-concept, and eventually a startup: Gumloop. Gumloop automates repetitive workflows with AI, aiming to streamline basic tasks. “We started the company in a bedroom in Vancouver as a side project,” Brodeur-Urbas said. “We were trying to solve a very simple problem for a group of nontechnical people in a Discord server, and it spiralled into something larger than we could have ever imagined.”

Vancouver Startup Gumloop Simplifies Ai Workflow Automation

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