Google Vet amasse $ 8 million for continua to bring AI agents to group cats

In early 2023, David Petrou, distinguished engineer and founding member of the two Google Goggles And Google Glass, made a surprising decision. After more than 17 years in the company, he left to launch his own startup.

“I saw how fast technology was changing, and I felt that there were certain ideas that are better explored in the context of a startup,” Petrou told Techcrunch.

His ultimate idea was to build ContinuousA company oriented to consumers who use AI agents to improve collaboration and interaction in group cats on SMS, Imessage and Discord.

“The simple way of thinking about it is that we bring the power of LLM to group cats,” said Petrou.

Continue announced on Tuesday that he had raised a seed lap of $ 8 million. The funding was led by GV, with an additional participation of Bessemer Ventures Partners and a group of providential investors.

During the development of continua, Petrou noted that people would interact with Chatgpt or another LLM, then copy and passed what they had learned in their group conversation.

“If you and I are planning a trip, or if we try to understand what to have for dinner, or which film to watch, all these things can be facilitated by an LLM participating in a group cat with us,” said Petrou.

Continue said that his AI agents can reduce group chat chaos by joining conversations and only offering useful information when necessary.

As the group discusses common projects and plans, continued can automatically define reminders, launch surveys, add invitations to the calendar or generate Google documents with control lists and task lists.

If a user forgets the details of the group cat, such as the time or the location of the meeting, he can simply direct the messages continued to ask the information in private.

At first glance, continued may seem a simple AI application, but Petrou said that involving the LLM to participate in a conversation with several humans is a fairly complex technical problem. Since most AI models are designed for conversations between one person and a single assistant, continued had to refine the LLM to understand the dynamics of group chat discussions.

For example, group members do not need continued to respond to everything they write.

“You want the agent to have a social intelligence,” said Petrou. He added that they had to “break the LLM brain” to naturally integrate AI into conversations.

Users can invoke continued when they need their help or tell the agent to “hang up” if he is too often interpreted.

Users can start with continuing by adding their phone number to a group group or its username to a Discord cat.

While several companies, including Meta and the Startup Hey Umi, offer AI agents for conversations, Petrou insists that Continua is most suitable for group interactions.

Erik Nordlander, a general partner of GV, said that his company had invested in Petrou before the concept of a group of continua chat Ai takes full form. “David is a truly brilliant engineer, someone who has been working with AI since it was hot.”

According to Nordlander, continued several potential paths to profitability. The agent is already helping event planning and travel booking, which he has suggested that he can invoice in the future.

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