Acti puts AI agents directly into your smartphone keyboard
Acti puts AI agents directly into your smartphone keyboard
Acti 将 AI 智能体直接植入你的手机键盘
A new startup wants to bring AI to the software you use the most: your smartphone’s keyboard. On Tuesday, Singapore-based Acti (short for “action”) launched an agentic keyboard for iOS and Android, one that doesn’t just suggest your next word but can also take actions on your behalf, bringing AI tools directly into the apps you already use, including email, messaging, social media, and more.
一家初创公司希望将 AI 带入你使用频率最高的软件：手机键盘。周二，总部位于新加坡的 Acti（“action”的缩写）为 iOS 和 Android 发布了一款智能体键盘。它不仅能预测你的下一个词，还能代表你执行操作，将 AI 工具直接引入你已经在使用的应用程序中，包括电子邮件、即时通讯、社交媒体等。
According to Young Wang, Acti founder and CEO, this solves a problem familiar to anyone juggling multiple apps; users have to constantly switch between different apps just to get an AI’s help.
据 Acti 创始人兼首席执行官 Young Wang 介绍，这解决了任何在多个应用程序之间切换的用户所面临的痛点：用户为了获得 AI 的帮助，必须不断地在不同应用间来回切换。
“Today’s AI agents are fundamentally limited because user context stays fragmented across separate apps,” Wang told TechCrunch in an email interview. Acti “sits across all of them, which is why we can build a context layer that genuinely belongs to the user instead of the platform,” he said. “That is the foundation the entire AI-agent era will be built on.”
“当今的 AI 智能体从根本上受到了限制，因为用户的上下文信息分散在各个独立的应用程序中，”Wang 在接受 TechCrunch 的电子邮件采访时表示。Acti “横跨所有这些应用，这就是为什么我们能够构建一个真正属于用户而非平台的上下文层，”他说，“这将是整个 AI 智能体时代赖以建立的基础。”
The launch reflects a different idea about how consumers will ultimately embrace AI. Rather than asking users to open various AI chatbots, Acti showcases how AI can be embedded into the interfaces we already use.
此次发布反映了一种关于消费者将如何最终拥抱 AI 的新思路。Acti 没有要求用户打开各种 AI 聊天机器人，而是展示了 AI 如何能够嵌入到我们现有的界面中。
For instance, if a friend wanted to know where to eat nearby, Acti could drop in a local recommendation. Or if someone mentioned a stock in your conversation, Acti could be used to share the live price right there in the chat. Today, you’d have to switch to a search engine or other AI app to get this sort of information, then return to the app where the conversation occurred, which takes time.
例如，如果朋友想知道附近有什么好吃的，Acti 可以直接提供本地推荐。或者，如果有人在对话中提到了某只股票，Acti 可以直接在聊天界面中分享其实时价格。在今天，你必须切换到搜索引擎或其他 AI 应用来获取此类信息，然后再回到对话所在的应用程序，这非常耗时。
Under the hood, Acti is powered by Google’s Gemini models, which Wang said were chosen for their balance of intelligence, speed, reliability, multilingual performance, and cost-efficiency. Gemini is also well-suited for one of Acti’s key features, called Skills, which work like custom shortcuts: Users can program a single key on their keyboard to trigger a multistep task automatically — for instance, translating a message or instantly sharing a meeting link.
在底层技术上，Acti 由谷歌的 Gemini 模型驱动。Wang 表示，选择该模型是因为它在智能水平、速度、可靠性、多语言表现和成本效益之间取得了平衡。Gemini 也非常适合 Acti 的核心功能之一——“技能”（Skills），它的工作方式类似于自定义快捷方式：用户可以对键盘上的单个按键进行编程，以自动触发多步骤任务，例如翻译消息或即时分享会议链接。
Importantly, Acti is built around a local-first model, which means users’ personal context stays on their device by default for privacy’s sake. 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.
重要的是，Acti 基于“本地优先”模型构建，这意味着出于隐私考虑，用户的个人上下文默认保留在设备上。该公司表示，除非用户明确调用需要外部处理的功能，否则该应用不会访问或存储私人消息、对话或个人上下文信息。
Wang says he was encouraged to work on a new keyboard for the AI era after previously spending a decade at Baidu, growing its Facemoji Keyboard to over 300 million daily active users. “When LLMs arrived, I realized something fundamental had changed,” Wang said. “Text was no longer just something people typed; it had become a carrier of intent. And in many everyday contexts, that intent can now be directly translated into action.”
Wang 表示，他曾在百度工作十年，将“Facemoji 键盘”的日活跃用户数提升至超过 3 亿，这段经历促使他投身于 AI 时代的键盘研发。“当大语言模型（LLM）出现时，我意识到某些根本性的东西发生了变化，”Wang 说，“文本不再仅仅是人们输入的内容，它已成为意图的载体。在许多日常场景中，这种意图现在可以直接转化为行动。”
“That made me believe it was time to reinvent one of the most basic and universal products people use every day: the keyboard. For me, the opportunity to rebuild such a foundational surface for the AI era is deeply exciting,” he added.
“这让我相信，是时候重塑人们每天使用的最基本、最通用的产品之一了：键盘。对我来说，有机会为 AI 时代重建这样一个基础界面，令人感到非常兴奋，”他补充道。
Acti’s business model is still taking shape, but the company plans to generate revenue via subscriptions that offer users more advanced AI models, higher daily usage limits, and other premium features.
Acti 的商业模式仍在成型中，但该公司计划通过订阅服务创收，为用户提供更先进的 AI 模型、更高的每日使用限额以及其他高级功能。
The app ships with some built-in Skills already, like “T,” which allows you to translate a message to another language by long-pressing the letter on your keyboard. Another Skill, “C,” will fire off a meeting link. Users don’t have to know how to code to create a Skill, the company points out. Instead, you can just describe what you want in plain language, and Acti builds it.
该应用内置了一些“技能”，例如“T”，长按键盘上的该字母即可将消息翻译成其他语言。另一个技能“C”则可以发送会议链接。该公司指出，用户无需懂得编程即可创建技能。相反，你只需用简单的语言描述你的需求，Acti 就会为你构建它。
Ahead of launch, early access testers built over 1,000 Skills in less than two weeks. These Skills can be either private for your own use or shared publicly to a Skills marketplace, where you can find those that people already built, like Skills for accessing real-time World Cup data or Polymarket links, among others. In the future, this Skill Hub could also offer additional monetization opportunities.
在发布之前，早期测试人员在不到两周的时间内构建了超过 1,000 个技能。这些技能既可以私有化供个人使用，也可以公开分享到“技能市场”，在那里你可以找到其他人构建的技能，例如访问世界杯实时数据或 Polymarket 链接的技能等。未来，这个“技能中心”还可能提供额外的变现机会。
The company also shared with TechCrunch exclusively that it has just closed on $5.3 million in seed funding, in a round led by BITKRAFT Ventures. “We backed Acti because this team has a real shot at owning the next phase of human-computer interaction,” said Jonathan Huang, partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, about the firm’s investment.
该公司还独家向 TechCrunch 透露，刚刚完成了 530 万美元的种子轮融资，由 BITKRAFT Ventures 领投。BITKRAFT Ventures 合伙人 Jonathan Huang 在谈到此次投资时表示：“我们支持 Acti，因为该团队确实有机会主导人机交互的下一个阶段。”
The Acti team also includes CTO Mike Sun, who was the founding technical lead behind Yike Album, Baidu’s cloud-photo platform, which scaled to over 10 million daily active users. Also at Acti is CSO Junbo Yang, who joined from HashKey Capital, where Yang led dozens of consumer investments.
Acti 团队还包括首席技术官 Mike Sun，他曾是百度云相册平台“一刻相册”的创始技术负责人，该平台日活跃用户数超过 1,000 万。Acti 的首席战略官 Junbo Yang 也加入了团队，他此前在 HashKey Capital 工作，曾主导过数十项消费类投资。