Continua, a startup founded by former Google engineer David Petrou, has raised US$8 million in seed funding led by GV, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and angel investors.

The company develops AI agents designed to facilitate collaboration in group chats across SMS, iMessage, and Discord.

Continua’s AI offers features like setting reminders, launching polls, adding calendar invites, and generating documents within group conversations.

Users can interact with the AI to retrieve information from past chats or ask it to participate less actively.

Continua can be added to group chats by including its phone number or Discord username.

Petrou said the technical challenge lies in adapting large language models to interact naturally in multi-user conversations, rather than traditional one-on-one chats.

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🔗 Source: TechCrunch

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Consumer group chat AI represents an underserved market segment

While the AI chatbot market is experiencing explosive growth, projected to reach $15.5 billion by 2028 1, most established players focus on enterprise solutions rather than consumer group chats.

Major platforms like Slack integrate AI agents primarily for business productivity tasks like updating sales proposals and managing workflows 2, while Google Chat emphasizes workplace collaboration with features like Smart Compose for professional teams 3.

RingCentral reports that businesses save up to $300 per agent through their AI-powered communication tools, but these solutions target organizational rather than personal use cases 4.

This enterprise focus creates an opening for Continua’s approach to consumer group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord, platforms where people naturally coordinate personal activities like trip planning and dinner decisions.

The timing appears favorable, as 88% of people had at least one conversation with a chatbot in the past year, suggesting widespread consumer comfort with AI interactions 5.

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