Wajo AI agent calls businesses for customers: answer the bot

A new AI personal agent called Wajo can phone a business, place an errand, and pay with a virtual card on behalf of its user. Vinod Khosla is backing it. For a small business, the news is simple: the next caller asking about your hours, your availability, or a gift order may be software. Your phone line and booking flow need to work for that caller too.

What actually happened

TechCrunch reported on October 6 on Wajo, founded by former Google and DeepMind engineer Shivani Poddar:

• The agent. Called Fo, it works through iMessage and WhatsApp. It handles scheduling, gifting, and life admin.
• What it can do. Call businesses or contacts for the user, use its own email address for business messages, and hand tasks to human helpers when software alone cannot finish them.
• Payments. It creates masked virtual cards so the user's real card number is not shared. Wajo has a patent application for the system.
• Guardrails. Calls are limited to a trusted contact list, and the agent records user preferences to avoid unwanted calls. When a site blocks it, it tells the user.
• Backers and traction. Investors include Khosla, Jeff Dean, and Gokul Rajaram. The amount was not disclosed. Wajo says it is in 107 countries and has grown 10x since its late-September launch; it did not share user counts.

Wajo is not alone. TechCrunch puts it up against Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots in the personal-agent race.

Why it matters for your business

Agents that act for customers end up at your front desk. Some will come through your website. Some will call. Plan for both.

1. Your phone script meets a bot. If an AI calls to book a table for six on Friday, your staff needs a policy. Do you take the booking? Do you need a callback number for a real person? Write it down before the first call, not during it.
2. Virtual cards change your fraud signals. A one-time card number with a name that does not match the guest is normal for these agents. Make sure your payment rules do not decline every one of them, and that your deposit and no-show policy still holds.
3. Make the easy path machine-readable. Agents prefer a booking link or a clear web form to a phone tree. Publish real hours, prices, and availability where software can read them, and fewer agents will need to call you at all.
4. Keep the human contact. Ask every booking, agent or not, for a direct way to reach the actual customer. That is your relationship, not the agent's.

Sources: TechCrunch.