Acti's agentic-keyboard bet: PH #1 Jul 1 2026, 561 votes, $5.3M seed

An agentic smartphone keyboard for iOS and Android that answers questions, shows live info in any chat, and runs user-made plain-language 'Skills' for multi-step actions across apps.

The keyboard, not separate chatbots, is AI's right home: one agent across all apps on a user-owned, on-device context layer, extensible via plain-language Skills.

$5.3M seed led by BITKRAFT Ventures, announced June 30, 2026.

Founder and CEO Young Wang spent a decade at Baidu growing Facemoji Keyboard past 300 million daily active users. When LLMs arrived he concluded text was no longer just typed words but a carrier of intent, and set out to rebuild the keyboard as the foundation of the AI-agent era, with CTO Mike Sun (founding technical lead of Baidu's Yike Album) and CSO Junbo Yang (ex-HashKey Capital).

Acti launched publicly on June 30, 2026 and reached #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt on July 1 with 561 upvotes and 231 comments. Powered by Google Gemini, the keyboard ships built-in Skills - long-press 'T' to translate, 'C' to fire a meeting link - and lets users describe new Skills in plain language; early-access testers built over 1,000 in under two weeks, shareable through a Skills marketplace. The company told TechCrunch exclusively it had just closed a $5.3M seed led by BITKRAFT Ventures, and plans subscription revenue for premium models and higher usage limits.

Placing agents inside the keyboard removes the context-switching tax that separate AI apps impose on users.

Wang's Facemoji track record - 300M+ DAU at Baidu - gave the team rare credibility for a consumer keyboard pivot.

Plain-language, user-created Skills turned the keyboard into an extensible platform instead of a fixed feature list.

A local-first design directly answered the privacy objection that blocks keyboards from accessing messages and context.

PH #1 with 561 votes and 231 comments showed a crowded market still rewards a fresh surface for consumer AI.

When a model changes what a familiar surface can do, the winning move is to upgrade the surface itself: embed the capability where behavior already happens, and let users extend it in plain language.

As of September 2026 Acti is live on iOS and Android and still defining its subscription model around premium models, higher daily limits, and extra features. Its Skills marketplace is positioned as a future monetization surface, and the founding team frames the keyboard as the user-owned context layer on which the AI-agent era will be built.