Ambi, founded by former Plaud executive Peter Mo, is building an AI assistant that listens to users throughout the day to offer real-time suggestions and surface relevant knowledge. The company announced it has raised $26 million across multiple funding rounds led by Luminous Ventures, a backer of Meituan and Unitree Robotics, along with ODM Huaqin. Ambi is simultaneously launching apps for iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch, with plans for a desktop app and a dedicated hardware device with a screen, speaker, camera, and microphones.

The core idea is to move beyond screen-bound AI assistants and meeting note-takers that only deliver summaries after a call ends. Ambi‘s agent starts working during the meeting itself, drawing on the user’s calendar, meetings, knowledge base, and web data to proactively give suggestions or surface relevant context in real time. Users can also begin a task on one device and continue it on another. Mo told TechCrunch that existing tools like Plaud require waiting for recording transfer, cloud upload, and post-processing, whereas Ambi aims to make intelligence available anywhere, anytime.

The company’s next steps include a desktop app that can observe users’ work, store important parts in memory, and use that context for more personalized suggestions, a direction similar to existing apps such as Littlebird and Minimi. A hardware device is also planned, equipped with sensors to capture context and display information.

Privacy is the central concern raised by this always-on approach. Ambi‘s launch follows growing unease about AI devices that lack clear indicators for nearby third parties when they are recording conversations. Some meeting note-taking products have faced lawsuits over recording people without consent, and Apple’s recently introduced Voice Intelligence feature, which continuously transcribes speech, has also stirred privacy questions. Ambi says the ambient capture feature is off by default and users can disable it at any time. The company claims it does not store recordings and encrypts user data, though it did not specify the encryption method.

Mo acknowledged that the responsibility for disclosing ambient capture remains with users. He described this as an unsolved industry-wide problem: Ambi can put disclosure information in many places, but if users deliberately hide that they are capturing conversations, the company cannot fully prevent misuse. The startup currently has over 50 employees across San Francisco, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and is hiring for go-to-market roles and AI engineers focused on speech recognition models.