Imagine a world where the power of artificial intelligence isn’t hidden behind a separate app, but seamlessly integrated into the very fabric of your daily digital life. That vision is now a reality with the launch of Acti, an innovative agentic AI keyboard for both iOS and Android. This groundbreaking solution aims to revolutionize how we interact with our smartphones, bringing advanced AI capabilities directly to your fingertips.
Launched on June 30, 2026, by Singapore-based startup Acti, this intelligent keyboard does far more than just predict your next word. It’s designed to perform actions on your behalf, embedding AI tools directly within the apps you already use, from email and messaging to social media and beyond. This eliminates the frustrating need to constantly switch between applications just to harness AI’s assistance.
AI Agents: Your Keyboard, Elevated
Acti’s core innovation addresses a fundamental challenge in current AI adoption: fragmented user context. According to founder and CEO Young Wang, today’s AI agents are limited because crucial user information remains siloed within separate applications. Acti, short for “action,” masterfully overcomes this by sitting across all your apps, building a comprehensive context layer that truly belongs to the user, not the platform.
This approach paves the way for a more intuitive and efficient user experience. For instance, if a friend asks for nearby dining recommendations, Acti can instantly suggest a local spot without you ever leaving your chat. Similarly, if a stock ticker comes up in conversation, the keyboard can display its live price directly within the messaging interface, saving you valuable time and effort.
Underpinning Acti’s intelligent operations are Google’s Gemini models. Young Wang highlighted Gemini’s optimal balance of intelligence, speed, reliability, and cost-efficiency as key factors in their selection. This powerful AI backbone ensures that Acti can deliver robust, multilingual performance across a wide range of tasks.
Unlock New Productivity with Acti Skills
One of Acti’s standout features is its customizable “Skills.” These function like personalized shortcuts, allowing users to program a single key on their keyboard to trigger complex, multi-step tasks automatically. Imagine instantly translating a message with a long-press, or effortlessly sharing a meeting link with a single tap – Acti makes it possible.
The beauty of creating these Skills is that you don’t need any coding expertise. Users can simply describe their desired action in plain language, and Acti’s AI will build the Skill for them. This accessibility led to impressive results during early access, with testers creating over 1,000 custom Skills in less than two weeks.
These user-generated Skills aren’t just for private use; they can be shared publicly through a dedicated Skills marketplace. Here, you can discover a growing library of community-created shortcuts, from accessing real-time World Cup data to pulling up Polymarket links. This Skill Hub also presents exciting future opportunities for monetization, further empowering the Acti user community.
Privacy-First Design and a Vision for the Future
Acti is built with a strong emphasis on user privacy, adopting a local-first model. This means that, by default, your personal context and sensitive information remain securely on your device. The company explicitly states that the app does not access or store private messages, conversations, or personal data unless you consciously invoke a feature that requires external processing.
The vision for Acti stems from Young Wang’s extensive background, including a decade at Baidu where he scaled the Facemoji Keyboard to over 300 million daily active users. He realized that with the advent of Large Language Models, text evolved beyond mere typing; it became a “carrier of intent.” This fundamental shift motivated him to reinvent the keyboard for the AI era.
Acti’s business model is taking shape around subscriptions, offering users access to more advanced AI models, higher daily usage limits, and other premium features. The company recently announced it secured $5.3 million in seed funding, a round led by BITKRAFT Ventures. Jonathan Huang, Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, expressed strong confidence in the team, stating, “We backed Acti because this team has a real shot at owning the next phase of human-computer interaction.”
The leadership team boasts impressive talent, including CTO Mike Sun, who was the founding technical lead behind Baidu’s Yike Album, a cloud-photo platform that scaled to over 10 million daily active users. CSO Junbo Yang, formerly from HashKey Capital, brings extensive experience from leading dozens of consumer investments. With a stellar team, robust technology, and a clear vision, Acti is poised to redefine smartphone interaction. Download Acti today for iOS and Android and experience the future of your keyboard.
Source: TechCrunch – AI
