The archive · Consumer Apps · Product decision · 2026
Acti's agentic-keyboard bet: PH #1 Jul 1 2026, 561 votes, $5.3M seed
Ex-Baidu Facemoji lead bets AI agents belong in the keyboard: a Gemini-powered iOS/Android keyboard executes plain-language Skills across every app
Acti
What the business is
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.
Starting capital：$5.3M seed led by BITKRAFT Ventures, announced June 30, 2026.
How it started
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).
What happened
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.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
Acti is a Singapore startup that launched an agentic smartphone keyboard for iOS and Android in June 2026. Instead of asking users to open a separate AI chatbot, the keyboard answers questions, drops live information like restaurant picks or stock prices into the current chat, and executes multi-step tasks - translating a message, sharing a meeting link - without leaving the app.
Founder and CEO Young Wang built the company on a decade running Baidu's Facemoji Keyboard, which grew past 300 million daily active users. His thesis: LLMs turned text into a carrier of intent, so the keyboard - the surface people use in every app - should become the agent's home, sitting across all apps on a context layer that belongs to the user rather than to any single platform.
Acti launched June 30, 2026 with Google Gemini under the hood, a local-first privacy model, and 'Skills': users describe a shortcut in plain language and Acti builds it. Early-access testers created more than 1,000 Skills in under two weeks, and the app reached #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt on July 1 with 561 upvotes and 231 comments, finishing July as the month's #2 launch with 984 votes.
The same week, the company told TechCrunch exclusively that it had closed a $5.3 million seed round led by BITKRAFT Ventures. Its business model is still taking shape: revenue is planned through subscriptions that unlock more advanced models, higher daily usage limits, and premium features.
What has to be true
- 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.
What can be applied
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.
Aftermath
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.
Sources
- Acti puts AI agents directly into your smartphone keyboard
- Acti - Product Hunt Launch Dashboard
- Acti: Product Hunt Pick 2026-07-01
- Product Hunt Monthly Top | 2026-07
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