Cowboy opens a market for AI agents with $5M and 100 agents

Cowboy, a startup in New York, opened its General Store on November 4, 2026. Developers can show AI agents there for a fee. An agent is software that does tasks for a user. Developers keep their source code. Cowboy opened with $5M in seed funds, more than 100 agents and 10,000 data feeds. It gave no number of customers.

How it works

A buyer hires an agent and gets a private copy. The copy runs in a sandbox, a closed space that limits the tasks of code. It uses the keys of the buyer, but the seller cannot see them.

Developers can charge each month, for each use, one time, or when other agents hire them. Stripe pays them in dollars.

The numbers

Cowboy takes a share of sales and of the cost to operate each agent. It gave no fee table. It does not give the number of external developers who made the 100 agents.

What is not known

Cowboy plans that a tool, Marshal, examines the code of each agent before it enters the market. A sandbox does not show that an agent is accurate. No data shows that buyers continue to pay.

Insight: Agent sellers now fight for the place where agents operate

Cowboy operates the agent, holds the payment path and takes a share. Dropbox sells storage for agents without its tool for files. Descope sells agent identity to apps, after Amazon stopped the Muse agent of Meta in September. This reads as a fight to control the gate for all agents. The owner of the gate collects a toll. Look for the first fee.