Former Plaud executive’s Ambi raises $26 million for AI assistant

Ambi, an AI startup co-founded by former Plaud executive Peter Mo, said it has raised $26 million through several funding rounds led by Luminous Ventures and original design manufacturer Huaqin. The company is developing an assistant designed to use continuously captured context to provide personalized help.

The startup is releasing applications for iPhones, Macs and Apple Watch. They offer meeting note-taking, with an option to keep listening throughout the day. Ambi says its agent can suggest actions and retrieve relevant information during meetings using calendars, previous meetings, knowledge bases and web data. Tasks can also move between devices.

Ambi plans to expand the information its software captures. An upcoming desktop app is intended to observe users’ work and retain selected details for more personalized suggestions. The company also plans a hardware device equipped with microphones, a camera, a speaker and a screen.

The products raise questions about how people nearby will know their conversations are being captured. It remains unclear whether Ambi’s apps or planned hardware will provide sufficient indicators to notify others when users do not disclose that recording is taking place.

Mo, Ambi’s co-founder and CEO, said ambient capture is disabled by default and users can switch it off at any time. The company says it retains no user recordings and encrypts data, although it did not identify the encryption method. Mo said users remain responsible for informing others about ambient capture.

Ambi has over 50 employees, with offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and San Francisco. It is recruiting for go-to-market roles and AI engineering work on speech recognition models.