David Petrou, a former Google Distinguished Engineer who helped create Google Goggles and Google Glass, has emerged from stealth with Continua, securing $8 million in seed funding led by GV (Google Ventures) with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners.

Continua says it is pioneering "Social AI", which is not simply a trivial application of generative, but the company's proposal to solve the problem of enabling a single chatbot to interact meaningfully with multiple users in a short time. The technical challenge was significant—Petrou's team had to fine-tune large language models to participate naturally in multi-person conversations without overwhelming participants.

Continua's agent can be added directly into group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord. Thanks to its understanding of group dynamics and social etiquette, the AI can distinguish between casual banter and actionable items, automatically creating calendar invites, launching polls, generating shared documents, and setting reminders when appropriate. Users can invoke Continua when needed or tell it to "hang back" during casual discussions.

"We're bringing the power of LLMs to group chats," Petrou explained, noting that people already copy-paste ChatGPT responses into group conversations for trip planning, dinner decisions, and project coordination. Furthermore, the company highlights the relevance of its product by citing studies that show 66% of Americans feel overwhelmed by group chats, despite nearly universal participation in them. Continua also cites a study claiming that 52% of the workforce reports experiencing burnout due to severe pressure, hinting that its "Social AI" agent could go beyond the casual group chat and contribute to relieving individuals from some kinds of work-related pressure.

The funding will advance Continua's mission to enhance how people coordinate and collaborate in their most important conversations.