Singapores Acti Raises US$5.3M to Build Worlds First Agentic Keyboard

Singapore startup Acti has raised US$5.3 million in seed funding led by BITKRAFT Ventures to build what it calls the world's first agentic keyboard, an AI-powered input layer that works across every application on a user's device. Rather than requiring users to switch to a standalone AI chatbot and re-explain their context, Acti integrates intelligence directly into the keyboard itself through programmable Skill Keys that can trigger actions like translating text, sending meeting links, or composing messages.

The funding will go toward engineering and AI hiring, deepening Acti's on-device intelligence capabilities, and expanding its Skill ecosystem and developer community. The company's broader ambition is to create a secure, user-owned personal context layer that runs on-device and under user control, storing knowledge about habits, preferred apps, and recurring tasks without sending data to any single platform. Early access users created more than 1,000 Skills in under two weeks using Acti's Skill Builder, which lets users describe a desired function in plain language and have the AI assemble the corresponding keyboard shortcut.

Acti CEO and founder Young Wang said that today's AI agents are fundamentally limited because user context stays fragmented across separate applications. Acti's cross-app presence allows it to build a context layer that genuinely belongs to the user rather than any platform. BITKRAFT Ventures partner Jonathan Huang described Acti as driving an architectural shift by reinventing the one interface every app depends on and turning it into the layer every AI agent will need.

Acti joins a growing wave of Singapore-based AI startups attracting global venture capital. The company's focus on on-device intelligence and user-controlled data also aligns with a broader push in Singapore toward privacy-preserving AI, an area where local startups are increasingly gaining recognition. The agentic keyboard concept positions Acti at the intersection of productivity AI and ambient computing, two spaces that have drawn significant investor interest this year.

Why it matters for Singapore: Acti's seed round and global ambition show that Singapore's AI startup ecosystem is maturing beyond services and into foundational product innovation. An AI keyboard that learns user habits on-device and executes tasks across applications is the kind of horizontal platform play that typically emerges from Silicon Valley. That a Singapore startup is leading this category signals growing investor confidence in SG-based AI teams building for a global market, not just regional deployment.