Mistlabs has officially moved Ambi — an AI app built around always-on background listening — out of beta. The company was founded by former Plaud executive Peter Mo, who previously held a leadership role at Plaud. Ambi's mission is to listen to the user continuously and provide intelligent assistance and useful insights in real time. The idea behind Ambi is that through constant listening, the app delivers real-time intelligent help to people. The announcement was made on October 12, 2026. The same day, Mistlabs also disclosed raising $26 million in a Pre-A funding round led by Luminous Ventures and Huaqin Technology.
Funding and Team
Mistlabs raised $26 million in its Pre-A round, led by Luminous Ventures and Huaqin Technology. These two companies are listed as the lead investors. Both lead firms — Luminous Ventures and Huaqin Technology — are called out among the round's participants. The amount raised — $26 million — was collected in a single round. According to the company's statement, the specific purpose of the funding is to finance development of a standalone AI wearable device. The official announcement was published via PR Newswire; TechCrunch reported the news first.
The Mistlabs team numbers more than 50 employees, working across San Francisco, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. These four cities are the company's base — the team is distributed across them. The company is now hiring engineers in two areas: go-to-market strategy and AI speech recognition.
How Ambi Works
Ambi is out of beta and live on Apple devices: apps are available for iPhone, Mac and Apple Watch. The beta is over — Ambi is now launched for Apple devices. Apple devices are noted as Ambi's initial platform. The apps act as meeting note-takers — they record speech during meetings and turn it into organized notes. Meeting mode is one of Ambi's key features: the app follows meetings and prepares their records.
Ambi's logic is simple: constant listening and drawing useful conclusions from what it hears in real time.
Users can optionally turn on a daytime background-listening mode. The mode is opt-in: when enabled, the app listens to ambient speech during the day and generates useful insights in real time; when not enabled, background listening stays off.
According to the company's plans, agent-to-agent communication between devices will be introduced in the coming months. In this mode, copies of Ambi on different devices talk to each other directly; Mistlabs calls this AI-to-AI communication.
Privacy and Disclosure
For always-on listening technology, privacy is the central issue. Mistlabs lists three guarantees: background data collection is off by default — meaning the app records nothing in the background until the user explicitly enables it; audio is not stored by default; and the third guarantee is encryption: all data is encrypted.
At the same time, the company requires users to notify people around them when background listening is on. All three guarantees are spelled out separately in the company's statement: collection off by default, audio not stored, data encrypted. This requirement applies to every instance of enabled background listening — people nearby must know a recording is in progress. Users must warn those around them before turning on background listening. Peter Mo made the point in the TechCrunch story; in his assessment, the problem isn't unique to Mistlabs — the whole industry has yet to solve it:
Notifying people around you about background listening is an industry-wide unsolved problem in artificial intelligence. — Peter Mo, TechCrunch
What's Next
Agent-to-agent communication across devices is planned for Ambi in the coming months — a feature that will establish direct connections between Ambi instances on different devices. Agent-to-agent communication is currently at the planning stage: its launch is expected in the coming months. In parallel, the $26 million round will fund development of a standalone AI wearable device: the device project is at the development stage, financed from the Pre-A round's proceeds. The standalone wearable is a separate hardware project, funded by the Pre-A round. The company disclosed this in its official PR Newswire statement.
The team keeps growing: more than 50 employees work in four cities — San Francisco, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Mistlabs is looking for new specialists in go-to-market strategy and speech-recognition engineering.
