Former Plaud exec raises $26M for AI app that listens to you in the background

Ambi is releasing apps for iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch that enables ambient capture One of the core promises of AI is that the more it knows about a person, the better it will be able to assist them with tasks and make appropriate suggestions, which, if you’ll believe the tech companies, requires apps and devices to listen, watch or record users’ activity all the time and gather all possible context. There’s obviously privacy and data security concerns with anything that’s collecting data about you continuously. But startups are building such apps undeterred anyway, arming themselves with the belief that the market for personalized assistance is big enough to swallow such concerns.

Former Plaud exec Peter Mo is building Ambi to do something similar. The app aims to provide real-time intelligence and insights to people by listening to them all the time. The company said on Monday that it has raised $26 million across multiple funding rounds led by Luminous Ventures, which has backed companies like Meituan and Unitree Robotics, and Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) Huaqin. Ambi is also releasing apps for iPhones, Macs and Apple Watch. These apps act like meeting note-takers, but users can choose to have them listening so they can capture context all day. Meeting note-taking companies have been working to automate tasks that follow once