About.

Efficient Frontier Labs builds the primitives AI agents need to act on someone's behalf and leave a record behind. Identity, so it's clear who asked. Settlement, so the money and the permission both move. Accountability, so what happened can be checked later: by auditors, by the counterparty, by the person whose name was on the line.

The thesis is plain. Machine-speed systems don't need more dashboards; they need proof. We ship five protocols, a consumer product called Caravan, a research program called Day Zero, and a weekly developer session in Oakland. Each is a practical wager on what that proof should look like.

Andrew Smith is the founder. The two decades before EFL ran through high-growth consumer companies that defined an era of internet retail (operating roles at Gilt Groupe, with its $250M+ exit, and SevenRooms, with its $1.2B exit to DoorDash) and through Supply NY, the events practice he built across seven-plus years and 100+ events globally, alongside earlier work with March of Dimes.

More recently, Maia, his AI storytelling tool for kids, was awarded Best Buzz Builder at the Lightspeed Ventures x Inworld Consumer AI Day 2025, and the team placed 2nd at Google DeepMind's Gemini 3 Hackathon in December 2025. He speaks regularly at ClawCon, Codex Meetup SF, Gemini Meetup, Stripe Build Day, and The AI People.

His preoccupation has been consistent for a long time: the gap between the authority a person grants and the authority a system actually verifies. AI agents turned that gap into an emergency. EFL is the bet that the emergency is also the opening; the right primitives, shipped now, decide what the next ten years of agent work looks like.

He reads too many field reports, keeps a running list of protocols that failed interestingly, and lives a short walk from the office.

Recent work from the EFL team. Some of it adjacent to the thesis, all of it shipped.

• № 01Mixtape: The BoothFinalist, OpenAI GPT-6 Astra Hackathon, NYC, Sept 2026. A browser DJ instrument; GPT-6 rides along as a read-only practice companion.
• № 02Imagination in Action · Impact StageEFL presents Mixtape: The Booth. Featured billing.
• № 03MixtapeCharity jukebox: scan, request a song, verified donation to a nonprofit. In beta, six charities, 90+ users.
• № 04Day ZeroAdversarial-AI security field reports. Two volumes published, plus live sessions.
• № 05Flowstate2nd Place, Google DeepMind Gemini 3 Hackathon, Dec 2025; adopted as a Cursor feature.
• № 06Maia StoriesBest Buzz Builder, Lightspeed x Inworld Consumer AI Day 2025.
• № 07Let's Call SantaFree seasonal service. ~500 callers reached Santa last year; likely back this winter.

Before EFL, a string of operating roles and projects that each turned out to be a rehearsal for this one.

• № 01SevenRooms$1.2B exit to DoorDash.
• № 02Gilt Groupe$250M+ exit.
• № 03Supply NY7+ years, 100+ events globally.
• № 04March of DimesRaised millions for AI research impacting maternal and infant health.