AI agents designed to handle tasks on your behalf are the latest craze in Silicon Valley, but the startup Fambot believes these assistants have a place in the physical world too—helping families manage the overwhelming mental load of kids' activities, school updates, newsletters, and all the other logistics that come with running a household. The company is debuting what it calls an "AI chief of staff" for parents, created by co-founders Greg Karlin (CTO, a former Instagram engineer) and CEO David Reich, a dad who previously served as President at UnitedMasters and led Uber's 250-person Transit team as a product head. Like many founders, Reich built a tool he personally needed. "I have three kids and am constantly struggling between doing all these executive jobs - as my wife is doing as well," he said. "And then, getting home at the end of the day, I just want to unplug, spend some time with my kids, be present, do some homework together… kick the ball around, and instead I find myself just spending an hour, literally, catching up on 40 emails."

As any parent with active children can attest, the flood of information goes far beyond email. There are WhatsApp groups to monitor, dedicated apps for school, sports, and clubs, paper flyers coming home in backpacks, and countless other updates. Reich said the constant effort to stay on top of everything made him feel like he was losing precious time with his kids. He and Karlin started working on a solution about a year and a half ago, later bringing on their third co-founder, Jason Morrow, who previously worked at Google and LinkedIn. The team set out to use AI to give families the feeling of having a full-time personal assistant that proactively kept them organized, rather than just responding to requests.

To get started with Fambot, families connect their email, calendar, and the WhatsApp groups they need to track. From there, the bot provides a daily checklist of to-dos and a preview of upcoming calendar events. Behind the scenes, the platform relies on a mix of different AI models, with the key guarantee that none of them can train on users' data. What sets Fambot apart from other trending AI agents like Poke or Instinct is that it isn't limited to text messaging. This is a major differentiator for the startup, as it's betting that people using AI in the real world will also want to interact through a web interface or a traditional mobile app. By offering software-based solutions instead of just texts, Fambot can develop more advanced features. Of course, users can still text Fambot for questions or updates if they prefer. The team also plans to expand Fambot's integrations over time to include more of the apps where family and kids' communications happen, such as those used by schools, sports teams, groups, and clubs. Eventually, that would position Fambot as a central hub for all kid-related and family-related communications—a bigger vision than just another textable AI agent.

"There's 43 million families in the U.S. with kids under 16, and they just haven't gotten the support that they need," says Reich. "We know what you're going to face before you do sometimes, so that you can be prepared for it."

Before its official launch, Fambot was tested by over 1,000 families, revealing that its target audience wasn't just larger, dual-income households. The beta included only-child families, single-parent homes, families where neither parent works, and other diverse setups. That showed the concept had appeal not only for the busiest households, but that Fambot could be useful for virtually anyone with kids. The startup has raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding, co-led by NextView Ventures and Baukunst, with additional backing from Correlation Ventures, Karman Ventures, and Founders Network.

Fambot is currently free during its beta phase on iOS, Android, and the web. Later, the company plans to price the service around the cost of a Netflix subscription, though that figure could shift.