Acti launches agentic keyboard with $5.3 million in seed funding

On Tuesday, Singapore-based startup Acti launched an agentic keyboard for iOS and Android. Unlike traditional keyboards, an agentic keyboard is a tool designed to suggest words and take actions on behalf of the user across different applications. The software is powered by Google’s Gemini models. Alongside the product launch, Acti announced it has closed $5.3 million in seed funding, a round led by venture capital firm BITKRAFT Ventures.

A core feature of the keyboard is “Skills,” which function as custom shortcuts that trigger multistep tasks. Users can program these shortcuts using plain language without needing to write code. Ahead of the launch, early access testers built over 1,000 Skills in less than two weeks. These Skills can remain private or be shared publicly in a marketplace. To protect user privacy, Acti operates on a local-first model, which is an approach where personal context stays on the device. According to Acti founder and CEO Young Wang, current AI agents face limitations because user context remains fragmented across separate applications. Wang believes that a unified context layer will serve as the foundation for the AI-agent era.

Wang previously spent a decade at Baidu, where he grew the Facemoji Keyboard to over 300 million daily active users. He noted that the arrival of large language models changed how text is viewed, transforming it from simple typed characters into a carrier of intent that can be translated directly into action. He added that rebuilding a foundational interface like the keyboard for the AI era represents a significant opportunity. The founding team also includes CTO Mike Sun, who previously served as the founding technical lead for Baidu’s cloud-photo platform, Yike Album, which scaled to over 10 million daily active users, and CSO Junbo Yang, who previously led consumer investments at HashKey Capital.

Acti plans to generate revenue via subscriptions. The company may also explore monetization opportunities through its Skills marketplace in the future. The startup’s approach to embedding AI directly into the keyboard interface attracted its early backers. “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.

Why it matters

Acti aims to solve the fragmentation of AI agents by embedding them directly into the smartphone keyboard, allowing users to take actions across apps without switching interfaces.