In early 2023, David Petrou, a distinguished engineer and a founding member of each Google Goggles and Google Glass, made a stunning transfer. After greater than 17 years on the firm, he departed to launch his personal startup.
“I was seeing how fast technology was changing, and I felt there are certain ideas that are best explored in the context of a startup,” Petrou advised TechCrunch.
His final thought was to construct Continua, a consumer-facing firm that makes use of AI brokers to boost collaboration and interplay in group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord.
“The simple way to think about it is that we’re bringing the power of LLMs to group chats,” Petrou stated.
Continua introduced on Tuesday that it has raised an $8 million seed spherical. The funding was led by GV, with further participation from Bessemer Ventures Companions and a gaggle of angel buyers.
When growing Continua, Petrou observed that folks would work together with ChatGPT or one other LLM, after which would copy and paste what they realized into their group dialog.
“If you and I are planning a trip, or if we’re trying to figure out what to have for dinner, or what movie to watch, all of these things can be facilitated by an LLM participating in a group chat with us,” Petrou stated.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
Continua claims its AI brokers can cut back group chat chaos by becoming a member of conversations and providing useful info solely when it’s wanted.
Because the group discusses tasks and customary plans, Continua can robotically set reminders, launch polls, add calendar invites, or generate Google paperwork with checklists and to-do lists.
If a consumer forgets particulars from the group chat, such because the assembly time or location, they will merely direct message Continua to privately ask for the data.
At first look, Continua could seem to be an easy software of AI, however Petrou says that getting LLM to take part in a dialog with a number of people is a slightly 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 its know-how to grasp the dynamics of group chat discussions.
As an example, group members don’t want Continua to answer the whole lot they write.
“You want the agent to have social intelligence,” Petrou stated. He added that they needed to “break the LLM’s brain” to naturally combine the AI into conversations.
Customers can invoke Continua once they want its assist or inform the agent to “hang back” if it’s chiming in too typically.
Customers can get began with Continua by including its cellphone 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, supply AI brokers for conversations, Petrou insists that Continua is best suited for group interactions.
Erik Nordlander, a normal associate at GV, stated his agency invested in Petrou even earlier than the idea of Continua’s group chat AI had totally taken form. “David is a really brilliant engineer, someone who’s been working with AI since before it was the hot thing.”
In response to Nordlander, Continua has a number of potential paths to profitability. The agent is already helping with occasion planning and journey reserving, which he urged they may cost for sooner or later.
