Tab, a new personal AI assistant you use by simply texting it on iMessage or WhatsApp, emerged from stealth on October 7, 2026 at a $300 million valuation, according to TechCrunch. The company declined to share how much it actually raised. Investors in the round include SV Angel, Valar Ventures and American Spirit, and the founders — Brennan Erbz, Stafford Schlitt and Ammar Amdani — started working on Tab earlier this year.

The pitch is deceptively simple: instead of opening an app, you text Tab like you'd text a trusted person, and it does the task for you. Ordering groceries, finding a birthday present, chasing bills, making bookings, placing calls you've been putting off — co-founder Amdani told TechCrunch that Tab "has its own phone number, computer, and wallet, so it doesn't tell you how to do those things. It does them."

Tab joins an increasingly crowded consumer AI race. TechCrunch positions it alongside the breakout hit Instinct and Meta's Muse, which launched last month as a personal AI agent that can shop, book travel and send emails. Amdani's argument for how Tab wins isn't raw capability — it's trust. "Your grandparents had a family doctor, a banker, someone who knew them and looked out for them," he said. "Most of us don't have that anymore." Tab's stated safeguards: your data is never used to train AI, your payment card sits in a vault Tab itself can't see, and nothing irreversible happens without your approval. (Those are the company's own claims, relayed in the interview — there's no independent testing yet.)

For now, Tab is in private beta behind a waitlist, and the company says it plans to launch a new product soon. At $300M before any public launch, the bet is clear: the next big AI consumer product might not be an app at all — it might just be a contact in your messages.

Sources