Phaze Raises $8.75M Seed Led by a16z to Give People and AI Agents Access to Computers

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Phaze, a remote computing startup from the team behind Parsec, has raised an $8.75 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The company gives people and AI agents remote access to powerful computers, so a workstation in one place can be used from anywhere, by a person or by software. The round was announced on 4 November 2026.

Indie, NextView, Makers and Lerer Hippeau also took part. Phaze says it will use the money to grow its engineering team, speed up product development and support customer growth.

Deal summary


Company	Phaze
Headquarters	Utah, USA
Sector	AI infrastructure, remote computing
Round	Seed
Amount	$8.75M
Lead investor	a16z
Other investors	Indie, NextView, Makers, Lerer Hippeau
Co-founders	Benjy Boxer (CEO), Chris (surname not given in the release)
Announced	4 November 2026

What Phaze does

Phaze builds an "access layer" between users and machines. A user can be a person or an AI agent, and the machine can be anywhere: in an office, a data centre or the cloud.

For people, Phaze offers a high-performance remote desktop. It is aimed at demanding work such as 3D graphics, design and software development, where lag or poor image quality makes ordinary remote desktop tools hard to use. The company says it wants a remote workstation to feel like the one on your desk.

It also lets IT teams treat workstations as shared resources. Instead of tying one expensive machine to one employee, IT can assign and reassign machines as needed. According to the release, high-end workstations can cost more than $10,000 and often sit idle.

For AI agents, Phaze gives full control of a remote computer's screen and applications. Agents connect through Phaze's recently released MCP server (MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is a common standard for connecting AI models to tools). The machine itself does not need any computer-use software installed.

Other features include:

Background work: an agent can run tasks on a separate computer without taking over the one its user is working on.
Hand-offs: an authorised employee can take control from an agent mid-task, then hand it back.
Access controls: enterprise sign-in, directory sync and audit logs. Agents inherit the same permissions as the user they work for.

Phaze has already built one example: an IT support agent that connects to an employee's computer, tries to fix a problem, and escalates to a human IT worker if needed. The human can take over and pass control back to the agent.

Why AI agents need computers

Until recently, most AI tools worked through text or APIs. That changed when AI labs started releasing "computer use" agents that operate software the way a person does: looking at the screen, moving a cursor, clicking and typing.

In October 2024, Anthropic released a computer use feature in public beta that lets its Claude model control a computer, according to Engadget.
In January 2025, OpenAI launched Operator, an agent that controls a web browser to complete tasks such as bookings and online shopping, TechCrunch reported.

These agents need somewhere to run. If an agent uses the same computer as the person it works for, the two get in each other's way. If it runs on a separate machine, someone has to provide that machine, control what the agent can reach and keep a record of what it did.

That is the gap Phaze is targeting. Its pitch is that the same infrastructure used to share powerful workstations between people can also give agents their own computers, with the same security and audit controls.

Who backed the round

The round was led by a16z, one of Silicon Valley's best-known venture firms. Martin Casado, a general partner at a16z, said the firm was "excited to support them again," which signals a returning relationship with the founding team.

Casado described the opportunity in terms of cost: "High-end compute is too expensive to sit idle on individual desks. Phaze is turning those machines into shared infrastructure for people and AI agents."

The other investors are Indie, NextView, Makers and Lerer Hippeau. The release does not say how much each investor put in.

The team's track record

Phaze is not the founders' first company in this space. CEO Benjy Boxer and co-founder Chris previously built Parsec, a remote desktop and streaming company.

Parsec became popular with game developers and other creative teams because it could stream a powerful office machine to a remote user with very low lag. In August 2021, game engine maker Unity agreed to buy Parsec for $320 million in cash, Game Developer reported.

That history matters for a seed-stage company. The core technical problem, making a remote machine feel local, is one the team has already solved once at scale. Casado noted that the founders "have been building in this space for more than a decade."

What is new is the second user. Parsec was built for people. Phaze is built for people and software agents at the same time, with the permissions and audit trails that companies expect when software is acting on an employee's behalf.

What the company said

"The computer sitting on your desk shouldn't determine what compute you can access," said Benjy Boxer, CEO and co-founder of Phaze.

"People need powerful workstations to do their jobs, and now AI agents need computers they can actually operate. We're building the access layer that lets either one connect to the machine they need, wherever it happens to be."

What to watch next

Phaze has shared its product plans but few business details. Some open questions:

Customers. The release names no customers and gives no usage or revenue figures. The first public enterprise customers will show whether the shared workstation idea lands with IT teams.
Agent adoption. Computer-use agents are still early and, by their makers' own accounts, error-prone. Demand for agent-ready machines depends on how quickly these agents become reliable enough for everyday work.
Competition. Remote desktop is a crowded market, and AI labs and cloud providers are building their own environments for agents to run in. Phaze will need to show why companies should use a separate access layer.
Security. Letting software control a computer raises obvious questions about what it can see and do. Phaze's permission model, where agents inherit their user's access, will face close scrutiny from IT and security teams.
Hiring. Growing the engineering team is the first use Phaze lists for the new money. The size and speed of that hiring will show how quickly Phaze plans to scale.