Acti, a Singapore startup founded by former Baidu executive Young Wang, rolled out an AI‑enhanced keyboard for iPhone and Android on Tuesday. The app does more than suggest the next word; it lets users invoke artificial‑intelligence agents directly from the keyboard, pulling information, executing tasks and even launching multistep workflows without switching to a separate app.
Wang told TechCrunch that today’s AI agents are hampered by fragmented user context spread across dozens of applications. By sitting on top of the keyboard, Acti creates a “context layer” that belongs to the user rather than any single platform. The result is a seamless experience: a friend asks where to eat, and the keyboard drops a nearby restaurant suggestion; a colleague mentions a stock ticker, and the live price appears instantly in the chat.
Under the hood, Acti runs on Google’s Gemini large‑language models. Wang said Gemini struck the right balance of intelligence, speed, multilingual capability and cost, making it ideal for the company’s core feature called Skills. A Skill functions like a custom shortcut – a single key press can translate a message, generate a meeting link or pull real‑time sports data. Users create Skills by describing the desired outcome in plain language; the system builds the automation without any coding required.
Privacy is baked into the product. Acti adopts a local‑first architecture, meaning personal data stays on the device unless a user explicitly invokes a feature that requires external processing. The company asserts it does not store private messages or conversation history by default.
Early testers built more than 1,000 Skills within two weeks of gaining access. Some Skills are private, while others are shared publicly in a Skills marketplace that functions as both a community hub and a potential future revenue stream. Built‑in Skills include “T” for translation and “C” for instantly sharing a meeting link.
Acti’s business model is still evolving, but Wang indicated the firm plans to monetize through subscription tiers that unlock higher‑end AI models, larger daily usage limits and premium features. The company hopes the subscription model will attract power users who rely heavily on the keyboard’s automation capabilities.
The launch coincided with a $5.3 million seed round led by BITKRAFT Ventures. Jonathan Huang, a partner at BITKRAFT, said the firm backed Acti because the team “has a real shot at owning the next phase of human‑computer interaction.” The round also includes contributions from CTO Mike Sun, who previously built Baidu’s Yike Album, and CSO Junbo Yang, formerly of HashKey Capital.
Wang’s motivation traces back to his decade at Baidu, where he helped grow the Facemoji Keyboard to over 300 million daily active users. He observed that large‑language models turned text from a static input into a carrier of intent, prompting him to reinvent the keyboard for the AI era. “When LLMs arrived, I realized something fundamental had changed,” he said. “Text became a way to command actions, and that’s why we built a keyboard that can execute those commands on the fly.”
Analysts see Acti’s approach as a potential shift in how consumers engage with AI. Rather than opening dedicated chatbot apps, users can now embed intelligence into the interfaces they already use daily. If the product gains traction, it could influence the design of other core mobile experiences, from messaging to email and beyond.
Este artículo fue escrito con la asistencia de IA.
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