A new startup wants to bring AI to the software you use the most: your smartphone’s keyboard. On Tuesday, Singapore-based Acti launched an agentic keyboard for iOS and Android, one that doesn’t just suggest your next word but can take actions on your behalf, bringing AI tools directly into the apps you already use, including email, messaging, social media, and more. 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.

“Today’s AI agents are fundamentally limited because user context stays fragmented across separate apps,” Wang told TechCrunch in an email interview (due to time zone differences). 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.” 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. For instance, if a friend wanted to know where to eat nearby, Acti (short for “action”) 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. 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 multi-step task automatically — for instance, translating a message or instantly sharing a meeting link (see examples below).

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. 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.” “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. 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.