Google Vet’s AI Group Chat Startup Continua Secures $8M Seed Funding
Google Vet’s AI Group Chat Startup Continua Secures $8M Seed Funding
Continua, a pioneering startup founded by former Google distinguished engineer David Petrou, has successfully closed an $8 million seed funding round. The investment was spearheaded by GV, with significant contributions from Bessemer Ventures Partners and a consortium of angel investors. This substantial capital injection will fuel the development of Continua’s innovative AI agents, designed to revolutionize collaboration and interaction within popular group chat platforms like SMS, iMessage, and Discord.
Petrou, who departed Google in early 2023 after a 17-year tenure, embarked on this venture to explore the burgeoning potential of AI in a startup environment. Continua’s core offering brings the power of large language models (LLMs) directly into group conversations, addressing the common practice of users copying and pasting LLM insights into chats. The platform’s AI agents are engineered to reduce chat chaos by providing timely and relevant information, setting reminders, launching polls, adding calendar invitations, and generating documents with checklists.
A key technical challenge overcome by Continua is integrating LLMs into multi-human conversations, ensuring the AI possesses ‘social intelligence’ and intervenes only when necessary. Users can invoke the agent or instruct it to ‘hang back’ as needed. Continua is accessible by simply adding its phone number to an SMS group or username to a Discord chat. With potential paths to profitability through features like event planning and trip booking, Continua aims to redefine how groups interact and collaborate digitally.
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