David Petrou, a senior engineer with over 17 years at Google, made an unexpected decision in early 2023. As a distinguished engineer and founding member of Google Goggles and Google Glass, Petrou chose to leave the company and start his own startup.

Petrou said, "I saw how fast technology is changing, and I felt that some ideas were best explored in a startup environment."

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His entrepreneurial idea eventually gave birth to Continua, a consumer-focused company that uses AI agents to enhance collaboration and interaction in SMS, iMessage, and Discord group chats.

Petrou said, "In short, we are bringing the power of large language models into group chats."

GV leads the seed round, solving the problem of chaotic group chats

Continua announced on Tuesday that it has completed an $8 million seed funding round. The round was led by GV, with Bessemer Ventures Partners and a group of angel investors also participating.

During the development of Continua, Petrou noticed that people often interact with ChatGPT or other large language models and then copy and paste what they learned into group conversations.

Petrou said, "If you and I are planning a trip, or trying to decide what to eat for dinner, or what movie to watch, all these things can be facilitated by involving a large language model in our group chat."

Continua claims its AI agents can reduce the chaos of group chats by participating in the conversation and providing useful information only when needed.

Rich smart assistant features, significant technical challenges

When group discussions involve projects and joint planning, Continua can automatically set reminders, initiate polls, add calendar invites, or generate Google Docs containing checklists and to-do lists.

If users forget details from a group chat, such as meeting times or locations, they can directly message Continua to ask for the information.

At first glance, Continua may seem like a direct application of AI, but Petrou says that having a large language model participate in multi-person conversations is actually a quite complex technical challenge. Since most AI models are designed for one-on-one conversations between a person and a single assistant, Continua must fine-tune the large language model to understand the dynamics of group chat discussions.

For example, group members don't need Continua to respond to everything they write. Petrou said, "You want the agent to have social intelligence." He added that they must "break the thinking pattern of large language models" to let the AI naturally integrate into the conversation.

Users can call upon Continua when they need help, or if it interjects too frequently, they can tell the AI, "Step back a bit."

Easy to use, broad commercial prospects

Users can start using Continua by adding its phone number to a group text or adding its username to a Discord chat.

Although several companies, including Meta and startup Hey Umai, offer conversational AI agents, Petrou insists that Continua is best suited for group interaction scenarios.

Erik Nordlander, a general partner at GV, said his company invested in Petrou even before the concept of Continua's group chat AI was fully formed. "David is a truly outstanding engineer who started working on AI long before it became a hot topic."

Nordlander noted that Continua has several potential revenue paths. The agent is already helping with event planning and travel bookings, and he suggested that these services could be charged in the future.

This innovative solution has the potential to change the way people collaborate in group chats, expanding AI from a personal assistant to a smart participant in group collaboration.