Pitches · Pre-seed · November 2026

Tabs & Spaces by ProteusAI

A coworking space for people and AI agents, for companies that have to own their data.

Think Grok Bot or OpenAI Dots: agents with computers of their own, doing real work beside your team. But on infrastructure the company controls, with the models it chooses, so banks, hospitals, law firms and insurers can finally use AI.

02 The problem

The companies that would gain most from AI can't use it.

Every question asked of an AI tool, and every document given to it, leaves the company: to the AI company's servers, its models and its staff. For most businesses that's a trade-off. For a regulated one, it's out of the question.

Banks and insurersBanking secrecy, anti-money-laundering rules, and outsourcing rules for anything critical (DORA, in force across the EU since January 2025).

Hospitals and clinicsMedical confidentiality, and health data as a special category under the GDPR.

Law firmsLegal privilege, and clients who forbid their files leaving the firm.

Finance and the public sectorData that has to stay in the country, on systems they can audit.

So their people keep doing by hand what agents could prepare in minutes, or they paste customers' data into tools they shouldn't. In the AI era, owning your data has gone from a nice-to-have to the condition for using AI at all.

03 Why now

Agents that do real work arrived this year, in someone else's cloud.

In August, xAI launched Grok Bot: agents with their own computer, signing into the tools you use and working while you're away.¹ In September, OpenAI launched Dots: always-on agents with their own cloud computers, working across the apps you connect.²

Both prove what agents can now do. Both run on their maker's cloud, with their maker's models, so they're out of reach for the companies that need help most.

Regulators are watching AI closely. The EU AI Act's obligations are phasing in, and creditworthiness checks on people are high-risk under it.
Open models are good enough to do real work on a company's own servers.
Companies have the infrastructure: their own data centres and private clouds, and the people who run them.

04 The solution

Tabs & Spaces: people and agents, working together, on the company's own infrastructure.

A workspace where teams and their agents work side by side: a space for every team and topic, with tabs for conversations, files, tasks and apps. Agents have instructions, computers of their own and a budget; they answer, carry out tasks on a schedule, and ask before they change anything.

On infrastructure the company controls

Databaseits own MongoDB Filesits own S3-compatible bucket Agent runtimeits own OpenClaw Gateway Modelsthe ones it approves, where it decides

Run it yourself on your own servers, or on ours, with your own database and bucket. Nothing reaches us unless you send it, and every action, by people and agents, is in an audit log that shows if it's been changed.

05 What's live

Built, running, and used by paying customers.

The cloud serviceLive at tabsandspaces.app, where companies start a workspace in minutes and pay monthly.

Self-hostingA ready-made kit for a company's own servers: the app, the agents' runtime and a manager for agents' computers.

Agents that do the workInstructions, memory, computers of their own, tasks on a schedule, workflows, triggers, approvals and budgets.

Apps and a marketplaceAgents, apps, and workspace and space templates; an SDK and a command-line tool on npm for developers.

Where people already areAgents in Telegram, Slack and WhatsApp, and connectors to MCP tools.

GovernanceRoles and guests, approvals, an audit log that shows changes, budgets and limits per agent, and exports.

Check, a KYC agent, reads a register extract and says what's still missing, waiting for the analyst's yes — The real app: a KYC agent reads a customer's register extract, says what's missing, and waits for the analyst's yes.

06 Example: a bank

A bank's teams, each with an agent beside them.

We've made a ready-made workspace for a bank: start from the template and it's set up in seconds, with its spaces, agents, apps, routines and example policies.

KYCCheck reads customers' documents against the due diligence checklist and says what's missing.

CreditMemo works out the ratios, checks the credit policy and drafts the memo for committee.

ComplianceCompass answers from the bank's own policies, quoting the passage, and keeps the AI register.

Customer serviceDesk drafts replies to complaints on time; a person sends them.

People decide, with four eyes; agents never decide on a customer or a credit. See how it works →

Memo checks a business loan against the credit policy and drafts the memo — Memo checks a €1.2m business loan against the credit policy, drafts the memo and waits for the analyst.

07 Traction

Early, honest numbers, and Dutch banks next.

2companies paying for the cloud service, since we started selling in September 2026

$500a month in subscriptions

2people building it, with our own agents on Tabs & Spaces

With a Dutch partner, a startup still in stealth, we're already building AI solutions for Dutch banks. Banks are exactly who Tabs & Spaces is for, and we expect to be big in that space (pun intended).

08 Business model

Subscriptions in the cloud, support for those who run it themselves.

CloudA monthly subscription per workspace, for the people and agents it uses.

Self-hostedThe software on the company's own servers, with a support plan (Standard or Priority) for those who want us on call.

Regulated companies start on their own infrastructure, with us supporting them; teams that can use our cloud start there in minutes.

09 How we're different

The agents of Grok Bot and Dots, the ownership of software you run yourself.

	Grok Bot, OpenAI Dots	Tabs & Spaces
Where data and agents run	The vendor's cloud	Infrastructure the company controls
Models	The vendor's own	Any: open models on its own servers, or a provider it chooses
Run it yourself	No	Yes, or in our cloud with your own database and bucket

The agents' runtime is OpenClaw, an open-source project. We maintain our own fork, so what agents can do on a company's servers is in our hands and theirs.

10 Team

We build Tabs & Spaces with Tabs & Spaces.

Before writing a line of it, I spent two years speaking with companies and founders about how AI could help them. One blocker came up again and again: their data couldn't leave. Regulation and privacy laws kept the companies with the most to gain from using AI at all.

I started ProteusAI full-time in January 2025 to fix that, and built Tabs & Spaces to run services and language models on infrastructure companies own or control.

We were a team of seven; financial constraints brought us down to two. Agents on Tabs & Spaces keep us shipping as if we were more: they draft, review, research and test beside us every day.

ProteusAI · registered in the Netherlands in 2024 · operating since January 2025 · tabsandspaces.dev · developer.tabsandspaces.dev

11 The ask

€400,000, pre-seed, to put Tabs & Spaces inside regulated companies.

We haven't raised before. This round pays for three things:

Running the company while the first banks and their partners come on board.
Engineering to make installing it simple on a company's own infrastructure, its models included, so its own engineers can do it without us.
Certifications regulated buyers ask for: ISO 27001, SOC 2 and SOC 3.

Talk to us Try Tabs & Spaces