Town Raises $55M Series A from a16z and Forerunner
Town (town.com) raised a $55 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and Forerunner Ventures, with continued backing from First Round Capital, Alt Capital, and Conviction. The company exited beta on June 3, 2026, opening its “Townie” assistant to everyone alongside the raise.
It’s one of the larger Series A rounds for a personal-AI-assistant startup this year, and a clear signal that investors think the “assistant that does the work” category is real.
What Town does
Every Town user gets a “Townie” — an assistant with its own @town.com email address. You forward it email, or message it on Slack, WhatsApp, or Telegram, and it executes: drafting replies in your voice, scheduling meetings, researching contacts, and running recurring routines like morning briefings and newsletter digests. The pitch is that it “learns how you work” from your existing activity rather than making you configure it.
Town now connects to 50+ tools — Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Notion, Linear, HubSpot, Salesforce, and more — and runs on iOS, macOS, web, and the messaging apps above.
The bet a16z is making
Town was founded by Jean-Denis Greze (formerly head of engineering at Plaid, before that Dropbox) and Tony Vincent (formerly Google AI). The founder pedigree plus a16z and Forerunner’s involvement is a bet that the winning consumer AI product isn’t another chatbot — it’s an assistant that quietly finishes work across the apps you already live in. That’s the same thesis behind the broader shift toward AI agents that take action rather than just generate text.
Where Town still leaves gaps
For anyone evaluating Town off the back of this news, three limits are worth knowing before you commit:
- Google-only for email and calendar. Town has no Outlook or Microsoft 365 support. If you run your inbox and calendar in Outlook — as roughly half of professionals do — Town can’t manage them.
- Credit-metered pricing. Town bills by credits (Free is 30 chats/month; paid plans run $15–$199/month) with pay-as-you-go overage of roughly $0.03–0.044 per credit once you pass your allotment, so a busy month costs more.
- Fixed routines. Town’s routines are largely pre-defined. If your workflow is off-menu, there’s no custom skill to build.
If those gaps matter for your setup, Carly is the closest like-for-like: the same forward-an-email-and-it-gets-done pattern, but it runs the full Outlook / Microsoft 365 stack alongside Google, the automation workflows run free, and you build custom agents around your actual process instead of picking from a fixed menu. We broke down the full field — Carly, Martin, Lindy, and more — in the best Town alternatives.
Ready to automate your busywork?
Carly schedules, researches, and briefs you—so you can focus on what matters.
See what people say
"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."
