Khosla Backs Ex-DeepMind Engineer's Agent Startup, Citing Distrust of Meta

Investor Vinod Khosla said he is backing Wajo, a personal AI agent startup founded by former Google and DeepMind engineer Shivani Poddar, because of how the company handles trust and safety, TechCrunch reported on October 6, 2026.

Wajo competes in a crowded personal-agent market that includes Meta's Muse, OpenAI's Dot and Instinct. Khosla told TechCrunch that an agent acting on a user's behalf must be trustworthy, and questioned handing personal data to an advertising-driven company: "who wants to give all their data to Facebook [Meta]? I don't," he said.

Wajo's agent, called Fo, works across iMessage and WhatsApp and through a web interface that sorts errands into categories such as scheduling, gifting and life admin. It can place calls to businesses or individuals, hire a human to finish a task, generate a virtual credit card that conceals a user's payment details, and operate its own email address.

The company has applied for a patent on the virtual card system and plans a "trusted contact" list governing who its agents may call. Wajo also said its architecture complies with Amazon's terms of service, after Muse was blocked by the retailer.

Additional backers include Jeff Dean and Gokul Rajaram. Wajo did not disclose how much it has raised or its user count, but said Fo is used in 107 countries and has grown tenfold since launching in late September 2026.

This story was first reported by TechCrunch.