IrisGo, Backed by Andrew Ng, Aims to Be Your AI Desktop Sidekick

['Industry insiders predict that the next breakthrough in AI will come from "proactive" systems — agents that can anticipate and fulfill a user\'s needs before they\'re even aware of them. One startup aiming to pioneer this space is IrisGo, which recently closed a $2.8 million seed round led by Andrew Ng\'s AI Fund.', "IrisGo is building a desktop companion for PCs that can learn a user's daily workflows and automate them with little to no human input. Co-founded by Jeffrey Lai, a former Apple engineer who helped develop the Chinese language version of Siri, IrisGo's core idea is simple: show the system how to perform a task once, and it will remember the process for future automated use.

Lai demonstrated this capability by having IrisGo learn to place a coffee order online, recording the steps to select a latte from Philz Coffee, fill out credit card information, and hit purchase.", 'The long-term goal is for IrisGo to automate a wide range of business-related tasks. The system comes with a built-in "skills" library, featuring tasks like email drafting, invoice processing, and document summarization. As IrisGo learns from a user\'s desktop behavior, it automatically adds tasks to its potential list of action items.

The application also includes a coding assistant designed to aid developers in their work.', 'Lai notes that despite advancements in AI, office work can still feel manual and repetitive. The goal is to shift toward a more autonomous workflow, where humans focus on high-level conceptual work and AI systems handle clerical tasks in the background. A key feature of IrisGo is its ability to process data on-device, providing stronger privacy protections than cloud-reliant applications.

While the system uses a hybrid architecture, cloud processing only occurs with explicit user authorization and utilizes end-to-end encryption.', "To establish credibility, IrisGo has sought backing from prominent figures and organizations. Support from Ng, co-founder of Google Brain, has been instrumental. Lai secured a meeting with Ng through a shared connection at Carnegie Mellon University, leading to Ng's AI Fund leading the seed round.

Nvidia and Google have also invested in the company. IrisGo recently launched beta versions of its macOS and Windows apps and is pursuing deals with laptop manufacturers to preinstall the app on new devices, including a recent agreement with Acer."]