Acti puts AI agents directly into your smartphone keyboard

A new startup wants to bring artificial intelligence to the software you use most: your smartphone keyboard.

Headquartered in Singapore on Tuesday Act Launched a proxy keyboard for iOS and Androidan app that not only suggests your next word, but can take action on your behalf, bringing AI tools directly to the apps you already use, including email, messaging, social media, and more.

According to Yong Wang, Founder and CEO of Acti, this solves a familiar problem for anyone who uses multiple apps; Users have to constantly switch between different applications just to get AI help.

“Today’s AI agents are fundamentally limited because user context remains fragmented across separate applications,” Wang told TechCrunch in an email interview (due to time zone differences). Acti “is in all of them, which is why we can build a context layer that really belongs to the user rather than the platform,” he said. “This is the foundation on which the entire age of AI agents will be built.”

The launch reflects a different idea of ​​how consumers will eventually embrace AI. Instead of requiring users to open multiple AI chatbots, Acti shows how AI can be integrated into the interfaces we already use.

For example, if a friend wants to know where to eat near them, Acti (short for “action”) can provide a local recommendation. Or if someone mentions a stock in your chat, Acti can be used to share the live price right there in the chat. Today, you would have to switch to a search engine or other AI-powered app to get that kind of information, and then go back to the app where the conversation took place, which takes time.

Under the hood, Acti is powered by Google’s Gemini models, which Wang said were chosen for their balance of intelligence, speed, reliability, multi-language performance and cost efficiency. Gemini is also well-suited to one of Acti’s key features, called Skills, which work like custom shortcuts: users can program a single key on their keyboard to automate a multi-step task — for example, translating a message or sharing a meeting link instantly (see examples below).

Importantly, Acti is built on a local-first model, meaning users’ personal context remains on their devices by default for privacy. The company says the app does not access or store private messages, conversations, or personal context unless the user explicitly invokes a feature that requires external processing.

Wang says he was encouraged to work on a new keyboard for the AI ​​era after previously spending a decade at Baidu, where he grew its Facemoji keyboard to more than 300 million daily active users.

“When the LLMs arrived, I realized that something fundamental had changed,” Wang said. “Text is no longer just something people write; it has become a carrier of intent. In many everyday contexts, that intent can now be translated directly into action.”

He added: “It made me think that it was time to reinvent one of the fundamental and universal products that people use every day: the keyboard. For me, the opportunity to rebuild such an essential surface for the age of artificial intelligence is very exciting.”

Acti’s business model is still taking shape, but the company plans to generate revenue via subscriptions that provide users with more advanced AI models, higher daily usage limits, and other premium features.

The app comes with some skills already built in, like the letter “T,” which allows you to translate a message into another language by long-pressing the letter on your keyboard. Another skill, “C”, will trigger a meeting link.

The company points out that users don’t have to know how to code to create a skill. Instead, you can just describe what you want in plain language, and Acti will build it. Prior to launch, Early Access testers built over 1,000 skills in less than two weeks.

These skills can be specific for your own use or generally shared on the skills market, where you can find those skills that people have already created, such as skills for accessing real-time World Cup data or Polymarket links, among others. In the future, this skill center could also provide additional income generation opportunities.

The company also shared exclusively with TechCrunch that it has just closed $5.3 million in seed funding, in a round led by BITKRAFT Ventures.

“We backed Acti because this team has a real opportunity to own the next stage of human-computer interaction,” Jonathan Huang, partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, said about the company’s investment.

the Act The team also includes CTO Mike Sun, who was the founding technical lead behind Yike Album, Baidu’s cloud photo platform, which has scaled to more than 10 million daily active users. Also at Acti is CSO Junbo Yang, who joins from HashKey Capital, where Yang has led dozens of consumer investments.

Acti is currently available for iOS and Android.