The core promise of artificial intelligence suggests that enhanced personalization comes from the system’s deep understanding of a user's activities. This capability, often promoted by tech companies, implies that applications and devices must listen, watch, or record users continuously to gather comprehensive context.
While continuous data collection raises significant privacy and security concerns, startups continue to build these applications. They operate under the belief that the market for personalized assistance is substantial enough to outweigh such risks.
Peter Mo, a former executive at Plaud, is addressing this need with his new venture, Ambi. The company aims to provide real-time intelligence and insights to users by utilizing an app that listens continuously throughout the day.
On Monday, the company announced that it has secured $26 million in funding across multiple rounds. The investment was led by Luminous Ventures, which has a history of backing significant companies like Meituan and Unitree Robotics, alongside Original Design Manufacturer Huaqin. Ambi is also launching applications for the iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch, designed to function as meeting note-takers that capture context passively.
Existing meeting note-taking companies typically automate post-meeting tasks based on summaries. Ambi intends to advance this by having its AI agent begin work during the meeting itself. The company promises its agent can proactively offer suggestions or surface relevant knowledge based on a user's calendar, meeting history, knowledge base, and web data.
Users also have the flexibility to initiate a task on one device and seamlessly continue it on another.
"The way we interact with intelligence is limited. Often the intelligence is trapped on the screen, and if you use hardware like Plaud, you need to wait for recording to transfer to the phone, upload to the cloud, and get intelligence after processing. That’s why we are building Ambi to use AI anytime and anywhere," co-founder and CEO Peter Mo told TechCrunch.
Beyond mobile apps, Ambi has ambitions to capture more information. The upcoming desktop application will analyze work to store important elements in its memory for personalized suggestions. Additionally, the startup plans to launch its own hardware device, featuring a screen, speaker, camera, and microphones to capture context and display information.
Ambi’s launch occurs amidst growing concerns regarding AI devices that lack clear indicators of data recording. It remains unclear whether Ambi’s applications or hardware will sufficiently alert third parties that conversations are being recorded without user disclosure. Some meeting note-takers have even faced lawsuits for recording conversations without consent, and Apple’s recent Voice Intelligence feature has further heightened privacy scrutiny.
Peter Mo clarified that users can disable ambient data capture at any time, with the feature turned off by default. The startup states it does not store user recordings and encrypts its data, though it did not specify the encryption type used.
Despite these measures, the responsibility for disclosure remains with the user. Mo stated, "We have to inform our users that they have to tell others about ambient capture. We, as an industry, haven't solved this problem [of disclosure]. We have tried to put the information about disclosure in every place possible, but if users try to hide the capture, we can’t just solve the problem."
Ambi currently employs over 50 staff members across offices in San Francisco, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. The company is actively hiring for its go-to-market function and AI engineers to improve its speech recognition models.
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