What if anyone could build enterprise automations just by describing them?
When my daughter turned one last year, I made what some might call a wild decision: I left my role as Chief Product and Technology Officer at Talkdesk to start Pinkfish. The timing wasn't perfect (is it ever?), but I saw something that needed to exist in the world.
Throughout my career, I've watched brilliant people trapped in a frustrating cycle. They see exactly what needs to change in their organizations. They see manual tasks taking up hours of their day. They know which processes could run better. But they're stuck — not because they lack ideas or motivation, but because the current platforms don't enable them to build what they envision.
I saw this pattern repeat at every company I worked with. A customer service manager who knew her team wasted hours copying data between systems. An operations lead who could tell me her ideal workflow but couldn't build it. These aren't isolated cases — they represent 70% of employees who spend their days on repetitive tasks they know can be automated.
My co-founder Ben Rigby and I refused to accept this as the status quo. We asked ourselves: What if we could give these people their power back? What if anyone could build enterprise automations just by describing them in plain English?
That question became Pinkfish.
Today, I'm proud to announce the launch of Pinkfish and our Generative Automation platform, backed by $7.6 million in funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, joined by Storm Ventures and angel investors. But more importantly, I'm thrilled to share what this means for every person who's ever felt powerless to fix broken processes in their organization.
Traditional automation platforms and RPA are long, expensive, and demanding. They require specialized skills, coding expertise, and months of development time. Companies spend millions on developers and consultants, yet most automation ideas get stuck in IT backlogs while manual work keeps piling up.
Pinkfish takes a radically different approach. You describe what you need — in your own words — and Pinkfish builds it. Whether you're technical or not, the knowledge you already have about your workflows and processes is enough to bring it to life. Pinkfish does the heavy lifting by connecting to hundreds of systems, performing browser automation, document processing, and more to turn your idea into reality with enterprise-grade reliability and predictability.
This isn't just about making automation easier. It's about shifting power to the people who know their workflows best. When we put Pinkfish in the hands of operations teams at IPSY and Humach, we saw them accomplish in hours what literally would have taken months.
We built Pinkfish to flip the traditional automation model on its head. Instead of making people learn it, we made Pinkfish learn from people. Here's how it works.
You start by describing what you want to automate in plain English — the same way you'd explain it to ChatGPT or any other LLM. Pinkfish understands your intent and builds the automation by connecting to hundreds of systems. Need to pull accounts from Salesforce where annual revenue is over $500K or create a support ticket in Jira? Just say so. Need to fill a form with no APIs? Just describe it.
Behind the scenes, we've built something we call Generative Automation. It combines the best of document processing, 200+ API integrations, browser automation, and AI agents into a single deterministic platform. That word — deterministic — matters. Unlike a lot of AI that can be unpredictable, Pinkfish runs exactly the same way every time, whether once or a million times.
When systems change (as they always do), Pinkfish notices and implements fixes as a means of self-healing. It keeps your workflows running without constant upkeep.
The arrival of generative AI marks a turning point for enterprise automation. Analysts project the AI agent market will grow from $5 billion to $47 billion by 2030, with McKinsey estimating that current technology could automate 70% of employees' time spent on manual tasks.
Take our customer Elevate. Their GM came to us after evaluating several automation solutions. They needed to advance with AI and consolidate platforms, but existing tools couldn’t keep up. With Pinkfish, Elevate got a one-stop-shop for all their automation needs, with plans to save six months of development time and a full-time integration engineer.
Wins like this matter because they show what's possible when you remove the barriers between ideas and execution. We're focused on a clear mission: Build automations 10x faster at a fraction of the cost.
Today, as we announce the launch of the world’s first Generative Automation platform, I'm thinking about what's next. What matters most is the shift in power — from technical specialists to the people who know their work best. From "I wish we could" to "I built this."
Somewhere there's a pink fish swimming in the ocean depths, defying an endless blue. It's a reminder that sometimes the best path isn't the most obvious one. Sometimes you have to swim against the current, challenge convention, and do something bold.
To everyone who's ever noticed something's broken and thought "there has to be a better way" — there is. We built it for you.
Welcome to Pinkfish.
Charanya "CK" Kannan
Co-founder & CEO, Pinkfish
Expanding possibilities for people at work
