A new startup wants to bring AI to the software you use most: your smartphone keyboard.
On Tuesday, Singapore-based Acti (short for “Action”) announced its Agent Keyboard for iOS and Android. In addition to suggesting your next word, this keyboard can also perform actions on your behalf, bringing AI tools directly into the apps you already use, like email, messaging, and social media.
According to Acti founder and CEO Young Wang, this solves a common problem for people juggling multiple apps. Users have to constantly switch between different apps to get help from AI.
“Today’s AI agents are fundamentally limited because the user’s context remains fragmented across separate apps (due to time zone differences),” Wang told TechCrunch in an email interview. Acti “lays across all of that, so we can build a layer of context that truly belongs to the user, not the platform,” he said. “This is the basis for the entire AI agent era.”
This announcement reflects a different way of thinking about how consumers will ultimately embrace AI. Rather than asking users to open different AI chatbots, Acti shows them how to embed AI into the interfaces we already use.
For example, if a friend wants to know where to eat nearby, Acti can provide local recommendations. Or, if someone mentions a stock in a conversation, you can use Acti to share real-time prices within the chat. Currently, getting this kind of information requires switching to a search engine or other AI app and then back to the app where the conversation took place, which is time-consuming.
Acti uses Google’s Gemini model internally, which Wang said was chosen for its balance of intelligence, speed, reliability, multilingual performance, and cost efficiency. Gemini also lends itself well to one of Acti’s key features, which are called skills, which act like custom shortcuts. Users can program a single key on the keyboard to automatically trigger multi-step tasks. For example, translate messages or share meeting links instantly (see examples below).
Importantly, Acti is built around a local-first model. This means your personal context remains on your device by default to protect your privacy. The company says the app does not access or store private messages, conversations, or personal context unless the user explicitly calls a feature that requires external processing.
Wang said he was encouraged to work on a new keyboard for the AI era after previously working at Baidu for 10 years and growing Facemoji Keyboard to more than 300 million daily active users.
“When the LLM arrived, I realized something fundamental had changed,” Wang said. “Text is no longer something people just type in, it’s now something that conveys intent. And in many everyday situations, that intent is directly translated into action.”
“That’s why I decided it was time to reinvent the keyboard, one of the most basic and universal products people use every day. For me, the opportunity to reinvent such a fundamental surface for the AI era is very exciting,” he added.
While Acti’s business model is still taking shape, the company plans to generate revenue through subscriptions that provide users with more advanced AI models, higher daily usage limits, and other premium features.
The app comes pre-loaded with several built-in skills, such as “T”, which allows you to translate a message into another language by long-pressing the letter on your keyboard. Another skill “C” launches a conference link.
Users don’t need to know how to code to create skills, the company notes. Instead, simply describe what you need in plain language and Acti will build it for you. Ahead of the release, early access testers built over 1,000 skills in less than two weeks.
These skills can be kept private for personal use or shared publicly on the Skills Marketplace. There you can find skills that people have already built, such as skills to access real-time World Cup data and Polymarket links. In the future, this skills hub may also offer additional monetization opportunities.
The company also exclusively told TechCrunch that it just raised $5.3 million in seed funding in a round led by BITKRAFT Ventures.
Jonathan Huang, partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, said of the company’s investment: “We backed Acti because this team has a real opportunity to capture the next stage in human-computer interaction.”
The Acti team also includes CTO Mike Sun, founder of Yike Album, Baidu’s cloud photography platform with more than 10 million daily active users. Acti also has CSO Junbo Yang. He joins from HashKey Capital, where Mr. Yang led dozens of consumer investments.
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