• Emergent is launching Wingman, a personal AI agent, to take on OpenClaw.
• Wingman operates on messaging platforms and integrates with tools like Gmail and Slack.
• Emergent emphasizes Wingman's security, offering features to prevent hacking and data leaks.

Vibe-coding startup Emergent is coming for the OpenClaws of the world with its own AI agent.

CEO Mukund Jha said that the company is launching Wingman on Wednesday, a personal AI agent that operates on messaging platforms like WhatsApp or iMessage and connects to tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Slack.

"It's going to come with its own identity. So it's going to have a phone number, it's going to have an email," he told Business Insider in an exclusive interview. "You would interact with it just like you would interact with a human employee, a human teammate, a human assistant."

The new product puts the AI coding company squarely in competition with tools like OpenClaw and NanoBot, which have seen blockbuster virality in the last few months. People around the world are using personal agents for practical and quirky uses such as productivity, stock trading, and even dating.

Wingman will also compete with agentic tools made by bigger AI labs such as Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. AI agents use large language models to execute specific multi-step tasks semi-autonomously. Unlike chatbots, they can make decisions on behalf of the user, including through interactions with everyday applications.

Emergent, founded out of Y Combinator's startup class of 2024 by Jha and his brother Madhav Jha, is one of the fastest-growing vibe-coding companies. In February, the San Francisco and Bengaluru-based startup announced that it hit $100 million in annual run rate in eight months, and is used by 6 million builders. In the interview, Jha said that the company made $8.4 million in revenue in March.

In January, Business Insider reported that the startup raised $70 million in Series B funding, including from Khosla Ventures and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The valuation was not disclosed.

'Really, really secure'

Jha said that he uses Wingman to reply to his emails, schedule meetings, and do research — like finding the closest WeWork in a new city.

He said that once users scan a QR code and do an authentication step, Wingman lives on their messaging platform of choice. They can then chat with it and delegate their work.

Jha said that the potential "downfall" of some AI agents and open platforms is their susceptibility to hacking and security breaches.

"We spent a lot of our time and energy in essentially making sure it's really, really secure," the CEO said. "We have had like multiple security teams, red team us," he added, referring to simulated attacks to identify security gaps in a technology.

Security features include not granting any open permissions by default, flagging content from the internet as untrusted, and offering a draft for review before an email goes out.

Wingman's pricing starts with a small subscription fee, followed by usage-based pricing.

In the interview, Jha said that starting off in the AI coding space has given Emergent a leg up in building AI agents.

"Our thesis right now is that most of the work that agents will do, whether it's building a PPT, building a research report, is going to be by writing code," he said, referring to PowerPoint. Emergent's background in making coding agents that are topping benchmarks would be a plus here, he added.

The company also wants to differentiate itself by being more user-friendly and having better outcomes compared to other agents in the market.

"It's more snappier, much more friendly," he said about Wingman. "A lot of our focus is on the quality of the outcome, and that's where we think we're going to win."