Four Labs, One Race: The Proactive-Agent Summer

Duet did not arrive alone. In seven weeks, four labs shipped always-on agents: xAI's Grok Bot in August, Meta's Muse on September 8, OpenAI's Dots on September 29, and Duet on October 21 — and on October 23, Muse expanded to Japan, its first market outside North America. The contest is no longer about who has the smartest chatbot; it is about whose agent you trust with your inbox while you sleep.

Key facts

Meta Muse launched September 8, 2026 in the US and Canada for personal errands; a small-business version connects Shopify, QuickBooks, Stripe and more (September 29). Japan launch October 23, 2026 — first market outside North America, on iOS, Android, and web.
OpenAI Dots launched September 29, 2026 at DevDay for ChatGPT Pro and Business Premium users, powered by GPT-6 Astra, each Dot with its own cloud computer and browser across 4,000+ apps.
Google's Gemini agent was announced October 8, 2026 (private preview), with role-based coworker agents carrying their own Workspace accounts.
xAI's Grok Bot shipped August 11, 2026, built around multi-agent teams rather than a single assistant.
Shared pattern across all four: none is simply open to everyone yet — waitlists, plan gates, and country-by-country rollouts define the category's first year.
Anthropic's stated difference: Duet leans to work (invoices, payroll, briefs, dashboards) where Muse and Dots lean to personal errands; Anthropic concedes ticket booking is a weakness.