Wajo has launched Fo, an AI agent that can make calls, send emails and pay for purchases, with a human assistant stepping in when the software hits its limits. The startup says Fo completed 71% of 104 real-world tasks, against 42% for OpenClaw, in its own testing.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
Wajo launched Fo on 29 September, according to Startup Fortune. The startup’s published fieldnotes also say Fo passed 94% of its safety checks, compared with 74% for OpenClaw in the same tests. Those figures come from Wajo’s testing and have not been independently reproduced, so they are a useful claim to scrutinise, not a settled league table.
Fo is designed to use a phone number, email address and payment credentials to handle errands. When it reaches a dead end or a task outside its authority, it can hand the work to a human executive assistant rather than improvise. For purchases, the privacy arrangements vary: some merchants support a single-use token, while other transactions may use a Wajo-controlled card or a saved payment method with explicit approval.
Why it matters
The most revealing part of Fo may be the hand-off, not the benchmark. Many agent pitches imply that software can simply take over an errand; Wajo’s approach treats human help as part of the product. Its task-completion figure gives readers something concrete to compare, while the different payment routes show why “the agent never sees your real card” needs detail behind it.
Our read
Fo makes a more grounded bet than the fantasy of an AI that never gets stuck: let it try, give it bounded tools, and bring in a person when it cannot finish. That is promising, but Wajo’s results are still company-reported. The useful next test is whether the completion and safety numbers hold up outside the maker’s own task set, and whether the human back-up makes the service dependable rather than merely more expensive to run.
What to watch
- Whether independent testing reproduces Wajo’s task-completion and safety results.
- How often Fo hands tasks to a human, and what that means for cost and speed.
- Which payment method is used for each kind of purchase and what approval is required.
Discussion spark: Would you trust an AI agent with calls and purchases if a human can take over when it gets stuck, or should agents stay limited to tasks they can complete without that hand-off?
Sources and evidence
- Wajo's Fo Agent Can Call, Email and Pay on Its Own, Beating Rivals at Getting Things Done – Startup Fortune (30 September 2026, 16:06 UTC)
Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.