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AI agents are expected to soon start making autonomous purchasing and scheduling decisions on behalf of humans. But a new startup argues these agents are missing a critical piece of the puzzle: the full context required to truly understand the people they serve.
Quick Overview
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Company | Nyne |
| Founded By | Michael Fanous (CEO) + Emad Fanous (CTO) – father-son duo |
| Funding | $5.3 million seed round |
| Lead Investors | Wischoff Ventures, South Park Commons |
| Notable Angel | Gil Elbaz (co-founder of Applied Semantics, Google AdSense pioneer) |
| Problem Solved | AI agents lack human context across digital footprints |
| Solution | Deploys millions of agents to analyze public data from social networks, apps, and records |
The Problem: AI Agents Don’t Understand Humans
Michael Fanous, a UC Berkeley computer science graduate and former machine learning engineer at CareRev, argues that AI agents currently cannot discern whether a person’s LinkedIn profile, Instagram activity, and public government records all belong to the same human .
This missing context prevents agents from making truly personalized decisions on behalf of users.
The Solution: Nyne AI Agents
To solve this, Fanous teamed with his father, Emad Fanous, a veteran CTO, to build Nyne—a startup aiming to become the intelligence layer that helps agents understand humans across their entire digital footprint .
Nyne deploys millions of agents across the internet to analyze public digital footprints, then applies machine learning techniques to that data . The platform can triangulate information about a person by looking across:
- Major social networks (Instagram, Facebook, X)
- Activity on apps like SoundCloud and Strava
- Public government records
“I can give them any piece of information about a person that could be useful to make the right next action,” Fanous said. “Once you make all these connections, you can understand a person fairly deeply, their interests, their hobbies, and how they think about very specific things.”
Why Google Can’t Solve This
While it may seem that Nyne is tackling an issue already solved by classic machine learning—given how effective Google’s ad targeting is at identifying users—Fanous argues otherwise.
Google’s “secret sauce” is its exclusive access to users’ search histories and cross-platform activity . This data advantage is something the tech giant will never share with external agents .
For everyone else, “this is an oddly hard problem to solve,” explained Nichole Wischoff, founder of Wischoff Ventures .
The Market Opportunity
According to Wischoff, the market for this data is massive and valuable to any company using AI agents to reach customers .
“Previous generations of adtech companies were able to gather some of this data, but Nyne intends to do this for the world of agents with much more precision,” she said.
Use cases include:
- Identifying customer life events (e.g., pregnancy) to offer relevant products earlier
- Enabling consumer-facing AI agents with deeper customer understanding
- Helping agents make autonomous purchasing and scheduling decisions
The Father-Son Partnership
As for how the father-son duo works together, the CEO says he has an ideal partnership with his CTO and dad.
“I think with co-founders, it becomes easy to walk away when things don’t work,” Fanous said. “If I have to ping him at three in the morning to finish a launch, I know he’s going to still love me the next day.”
What’s Next
With $5.3 million in fresh funding, Nyne plans to scale its agent deployment and refine its machine learning techniques . As more consumer-facing companies deploy AI agents, they can turn to Nyne to give those agents a deeper, real-world understanding of both existing and potential customers .
