In early 2023, David Petrou, a distinguished engineer and founding member of each Google Goggles and Google Glass, made a shocking transfer. After greater than 17 years on the firm, he departed to launch his personal startup.
“I used to be seeing how briskly know-how was altering, and I felt there are specific concepts which can be greatest explored within the context of a startup,” Petrou advised iinfoai.
His final thought was to construct Continua, a consumer-facing firm that makes use of AI brokers to reinforce collaboration and interplay in group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord.
“The straightforward approach to consider it’s that we’re bringing the facility of LLMs to group chats,” Petrou mentioned.
Continua introduced on Tuesday that it has raised an $8 million seed spherical. The funding was led by GV, with extra participation from Bessemer Ventures Companions and a gaggle of angel buyers.
When growing Continua, Petrou observed that individuals would work together with ChatGPT or one other LLM, after which would copy and paste what they discovered into their group dialog.
“In the event you and I are planning a visit, or if we’re making an attempt to determine what to have for dinner, or what film to look at, all of this stuff may be facilitated by an LLM taking part in a gaggle chat with us,” Petrou mentioned.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
Continua claims its AI brokers can scale back group chat chaos by becoming a member of conversations and providing useful data solely when it’s wanted.
Because the group discusses initiatives and customary plans, Continua can routinely set reminders, launch polls, add calendar invites, or generate Google paperwork with checklists and to-do lists.
If a person forgets particulars from the group chat, such because the assembly time or location, they’ll merely direct message Continua to privately ask for the data.
At first look, Continua could look like a simple software of AI, however Petrou says that getting LLMs to take part in a dialog with a number of people is a reasonably complicated technical downside. Since most AI fashions are designed for conversations between a single particular person and a single assistant, Continua needed to fine-tune LLMs to grasp the dynamics of group chat discussions.
As an example, group members don’t want Continua to reply to every thing they write.
“You need the agent to have social intelligence,” Petrou mentioned. He added that they needed to “break the LLM’s mind” to naturally combine the AI into conversations.
Customers can invoke Continua once they want its assist or inform the agent to “cling again” if it’s chiming in too usually.
Customers can get began with Continua by including its telephone quantity to a gaggle SMS or its username to a Discord chat.
Whereas a number of corporations, together with Meta and the startup Hey Umai, provide AI brokers for conversations, Petrou insists that Continua is best suited for group interactions.
Erik Nordlander, a common associate at GV, mentioned his agency invested in Petrou even earlier than the idea of Continua’s group chat AI had totally taken form. “David is a extremely sensible engineer, somebody who’s been working with AI since earlier than it was the recent factor.”
In line with Nordlander, Continua has a number of potential paths to profitability. The agent is already helping with occasion planning and journey reserving, which he instructed they might cost for sooner or later.
We’re all the time trying to evolve, and by offering some perception into your perspective and suggestions into iinfoai and our protection and occasions, you may assist us! Fill out this survey to tell us how we’re doing and get the possibility to win a prize in return!
