Asteroid raised a $500K pre-seed round in April 2025 led by Y Combinator.

This represents the company's only known funding round to date. The round was completed shortly after Asteroid's acceptance into Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch, which ran from January through March 2025.

Asteroid is a platform that lets operations teams build AI browser agents to automate repetitive web-based tasks like form filling, data entry, and scheduling. The product works as a three-layer system that transforms manual browser workflows into automated agents.

The visual agent builder uses a drag-and-drop graph canvas where users write plain-language steps or upload screen recordings. Each step becomes a node with safety guardrails that prevent destructive actions while allowing the underlying language model to reason through complex branching logic.

When an agent runs, Asteroid spins up isolated Chromium instances in the cloud, injects stored credentials and two-factor authentication tokens from an encrypted vault, and navigates websites using a hybrid approach combining Playwright automation with computer vision models. Users can watch live video feeds of their agents working and intervene through chat when needed.

The platform generates reusable Playwright scripts from initial AI-driven runs, cutting execution time from three minutes to 20 seconds on repeat tasks. Non-technical users deploy agents through the web interface while developers call them via REST APIs or embed them into voice agents and chatbots.

Typical workflows include insurance brokers automating quotes across 50+ carrier portals, healthcare teams scheduling appointments in legacy systems without APIs, and supply chain operators extracting data from vendor portals that lack programmatic access.

Asteroid operates as a B2B SaaS platform selling browser automation through a consumption-based subscription model. Customers pay monthly fees that include buckets of agent-minutes, with pricing tiers scaling from individual users to enterprise teams running thousands of parallel automations.

The company positions itself between developer-focused infrastructure tools and expensive enterprise RPA solutions. While developers can use open-source frameworks like Playwright or hosted browser services from companies like Browserbase, they require technical expertise to build reliable automations. Enterprise RPA platforms like UiPath offer comprehensive solutions but cost $50,000+ and need consultant implementation.

Asteroid targets the middle market of non-technical operations teams who own domain expertise in healthcare, insurance, and supply chain workflows but lack coding skills. These teams can build agents using natural language instructions and visual workflows rather than writing code or hiring developers.

The platform's hybrid approach combines AI flexibility for handling unexpected popups and website changes with deterministic script execution for speed and reliability. This reduces the brittleness of traditional browser automation while maintaining the cost efficiency needed for production workloads.

Revenue scales through consumption as customers automate more workflows and run agents more frequently. The unlimited user model encourages adoption across teams while credits provide the primary expansion lever as usage grows.

OpenAI's ChatGPT Agent integrates browser automation directly into its platform, positioning the company as a one-stop solution for AI workflows rather than just language models. Google's Project Mariner and Gemini Enterprise bundle pre-built agents with custom toolkits on Vertex AI, leveraging Chrome dominance and cloud distribution.

Anthropic's Computer Use tool lets Claude control applications directly through an open standard, encouraging enterprises to wire Claude into internal systems without third-party automation layers. These integrated approaches threaten to commoditize browser automation by making it a native capability of foundation models.

Browserbase provides SOC-2 and HIPAA-compliant headless browsers with live viewing capabilities, serving as infrastructure for AI companies building automation products. Hyperbrowser offers browser-as-a-service with sub-500ms spin-up times and built-in CAPTCHA solving.

These companies focus on providing reliable browser infrastructure but leave workflow design, monitoring, and compliance to customers. They serve developers who want to build custom automation solutions rather than operations teams seeking ready-to-use tools.

UiPath dominates the traditional robotic process automation market with comprehensive enterprise suites that cost $50,000+ to implement. These platforms offer extensive governance, compliance, and integration capabilities but require significant technical resources and consultant support.

Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism compete in similar enterprise segments with workflow builders and bot management platforms. These incumbents are retrofitting AI capabilities onto their existing automation frameworks while maintaining their high-touch sales models and complex implementations.

Voice AI companies have automated front-office functions like receptionist calls and customer support but struggle with the last-mile data entry problem in legacy systems without APIs. Asteroid can become the standard integration layer that connects voice agents to browser-based workflows.

This creates a packaged offering where voice agents handle customer interactions while browser agents complete the backend data entry automatically. The combination addresses end-to-end automation in industries like healthcare scheduling and insurance quoting where human receptionists previously bridged the gap between calls and system updates.

Healthcare and insurance workflows show strong repeatability patterns that can be packaged into one-click agent templates. HIPAA-ready EHR entry and multi-carrier insurance quoting represent proven use cases that can be templated and sold to new customers without custom implementation.

Building vertical-specific evaluation suites and compliance frameworks allows Asteroid to expand into regulated industries like finance and legal where browser automation faces similar challenges. These templates reduce sales cycles while capturing domain expertise that competitors would need years to develop.

Regulated customers increasingly demand agents that run inside private VPCs or on-premises infrastructure rather than public cloud environments. Edge deployment capabilities would open high-margin licensing opportunities for customers with strict data residency requirements.

International expansion into APAC markets with localized compliance frameworks could nearly double the addressable market. Countries like Japan and Singapore have similar legacy system challenges but different regulatory requirements that would need specialized agent configurations.

Model commoditization: OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are building browser automation directly into their foundation models, potentially eliminating the need for specialized platforms like Asteroid. If computer use capabilities become commoditized features of language models, the value of browser automation platforms could collapse rapidly.

Website blocking: The web is bifurcating between transaction-driven platforms that welcome browser agents and ad-monetized sites deploying Cloudflare protection by default. If more websites implement aggressive bot detection, browser automation could become technically infeasible for many use cases that drive Asteroid's revenue.

Legacy system modernization: Asteroid's value proposition depends on the persistence of legacy systems without APIs in healthcare, insurance, and supply chain industries. If these industries accelerate API development or system modernization, the fundamental need for browser automation could diminish faster than expected.