Andrew Ng, a prominent figure in AI development, has backed IrisGo, a startup that closed a $2.8 million seed round led by Ng's AI Fund. IrisGo is an AI assistant designed to learn and automate work tasks for knowledge workers.
Jeffrey Lai, a former Apple engineer who worked on the Chinese language version of Siri, founded IrisGo. ("Iris" is "Siri" spelled backward.) Lai describes it as an "AI desktop buddy you never knew you needed."
The assistant learns by example. During a live demo with TechCrunch, Lai showed Iris how to order a latte from Philz Coffee — complete with credit card details and purchase confirmation. When asked to repeat the order alone, Iris completed it without human intervention.
IrisGo targets repetitive work that knowledge workers perform daily: email drafting, invoice processing, report building, document summarization. It comes with a pre-loaded skills library and learns from your desktop habits to automate new tasks.
"Our target audience is knowledge workers — white-collar companies," Lai told TechCrunch. "There's a lot of repetitive tasks that those workers do every day."
The company emphasizes privacy. IrisGo processes most data on-device, keeping your workflows private. More complex tasks use the cloud but require explicit permission and end-to-end encryption.
AI agents that anticipate user needs are emerging as the next wave in the industry. With Ng's backing and Lai's experience, IrisGo is positioned to develop this category.
