# Atai Barkai

> Atai Barkai is the co-founder and CEO of CopilotKit, the Seattle-based open-source company building the interface layer between humans and AI agents. He and his brother Uli created AG-UI, an open protocol now adopted by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and major AI frameworks, with millions of weekly downloads. A physicist by training who pivoted into developer infrastructure at Meta and Doximity, Barkai bet early - during the GPT-3.5 era - that humans and agents would build software together, and is now turning that bet into the standard for how AI agents talk to the apps people actually use.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at CopilotKit
- **Organizations:** CopilotKit, tawkitAI / Tawkit Inc., Meta, Doximity, FermiCloud, University of Pennsylvania
- **Nationality:** Israeli-American
- **Education:** BA & MSc in Physics (foundations of quantum mechanics), University of Pennsylvania
- **Known for:** Co-created AG-UI, an open protocol adopted by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and frameworks like LangChain, Pydantic AI and LlamaIndex, Grew CopilotKit's open source to ~40,000 GitHub stars and ~4 million weekly downloads, Built infrastructure used by more than half of the Fortune 500, including DocuSign, S&P Global, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom and Function Health

## Career timeline

- **2014** — Research assistant with the UPenn High Energy Physics Group
- **2016-2020** — Senior Software Engineer (iOS) at Doximity, leading internal SDKs and the Dialer app
- **2020s** — Led a cross-team media SDK effort at Meta, improving infrastructure across Instagram and Facebook
- **2023** — Founded tawkitAI (Tawkit Inc.); built PodcastGPT, scaling to tens of thousands of audio hours streamed monthly; joined Techstars Seattle '23
- **2023** — Co-founded CopilotKit with brother Uli Barkai
- **2025** — Shipped AG-UI, an open protocol for agent-to-application communication
- **2026** — Raised $27M (Series A led by Glilot Capital Partners with NFX and SignalFire); AG-UI adopted by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle

## Achievements

- Co-created AG-UI, an open protocol adopted by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and frameworks like LangChain, Pydantic AI and LlamaIndex
- Grew CopilotKit's open source to ~40,000 GitHub stars and ~4 million weekly downloads
- Built infrastructure used by more than half of the Fortune 500, including DocuSign, S&P Global, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom and Function Health
- Raised $27M total funding ($20.5M Series A + $6.5M seed)
- Graduate of Techstars Seattle '23
- Previously scaled PodcastGPT to tens of thousands of audio hours streamed per month

## Latest updates

- **2026-05** — CopilotKit raised a $27M round led by Glilot Capital Partners (with NFX and SignalFire); AG-UI confirmed adopted by Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle.

## Links

- Website: https://copilotkit.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/atai-barkai
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/ataiiam
- GitHub: https://github.com/ataibarkai

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/atai-barkai
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-14