MacPaw taps Liquid AI to offer on-device inference to devs building for its app store
Quick Answer
MacPaw has partnered with Liquid AI to develop on-device AI inference systems for its SetApp app store, enhancing user privacy and offline capabilities.
Quick Take
The collaboration aims to provide developers with access to locally hosted AI models and a customizable stack for improved performance and adaptability.
Key Points
- MacPaw's AI assistant Eney will feature a locally hosted version powered by Liquid AI.
- Liquid AI's Elix system enables efficient on-device inference tailored to specific hardware.
- SetApp plans to offer AI apps with credit-based pricing for over 150,000 users.
- Developers will gain access to both local and cloud AI models through MacPaw's platform.
- Liquid AI emphasizes performance customization based on user input for model improvement.
DeepSignal Analysis
What happened
MacPaw has partnered with Liquid AI to create on-device AI inference systems for its SetApp app store. This collaboration aims to enhance user privacy and offline functionality by providing developers with access to locally hosted AI models and a customizable tech stack.
Key evidence
- MacPaw is developing an AI assistant named Eney and plans to create a locally hosted version using Liquid AI's on-device inference system called Elix.
- Liquid AI's co-founder stated that their models are tailored to specific hardware architectures, enhancing efficiency and security for on-device processing.
- MacPaw's SetApp app store currently has over 150,000 paying users and is exploring credit-based pricing for AI operations.
Why it matters
This partnership highlights a growing trend towards on-device AI processing, which can enhance user privacy by minimizing data sent to the cloud. By offering a customizable stack, MacPaw aims to attract developers to create AI applications that can operate offline, potentially increasing user engagement and satisfaction within its app store.
What to watch
📖 Reader Mode
~2 min readUkraine-based app developer MacPaw has partnered up with Liquid AI to power its products with locally hosted AI models, and eventually make the tech stack available to developers. The company is also preparing its SetApp app store for AI apps with credit-based plans for users.
MacPaw is currently working on its AI assistant Eney, which it unveiled last year, and now plans to build a locally hosted version, for which it has roped in Liquid AI to develop an on-device inference system called Elix as well as a local memory system.
“Before training our models, we select an architecture that is different and tailored to the hardware. That allows us to really have the most efficient version of intelligence that runs directly on the device, with benefits like privacy and security,” Liquid AI’s co-founder and CEO Ramin Hasani told TechCrunch.
MacPaw’s CEO Oleksandr Kosovan said locally hosted AI models will also give users the ability to run assistants and agentic workflows offline.
Notably, Apple already provides its own local models to developers. But Hasani maintains that Liquid AI’s models focus on performance for different capabilities.
“We are also building a customization stack around models. This means that with user input, the models can use the data and improve. We want our models to be adaptable and become more intelligent over time,” Hasani said.
MacPaw plans to focus more on AI apps for its subscription-based app store, SetApp, which has over 150,000 paying users.
Once it locks in the local processing architecture with Liquid AI, MacPaw wants to make the tech available to developers so they can use on-device inference with their apps. Kosovan said the platform will also provide access to other cloud models from companies like Google, acting as a one-stop shop for developers.
MacPaw is already experimenting with credit-based pricing for the app store, where users can perform a certain number of AI operations based on the credits they have and the complexity of the task.
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Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.
You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing im@ivanmehta.com or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal.
— Originally published at techcrunch.com
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