Poppy AI App Launches With Access to Calendar, Email, Messages and Location Data to Offer Proactive Suggestions

A new AI-powered app called Poppy launched Wednesday with the ability to connect users' calendar, email, messages and other services to surface reminders, suggestions and tasks based on what is happening in their lives. Poppy’s maker is Sai Kambampati, who earned a Master’s degree in Computer Science with a specialization in human-computer interaction.

He was previously a software engineer at the AI hardware startup Humane, where he said he has seen first-hand how people are trying to rethink how we engage with technology.

"I've always been interested in challenging what computers are able to do, especially the idea of ambient computing and computers that can proactively sense what you need and anticipate your needs," Kambampati told TechCrunch. "That's something that I found very, very exciting.

" At launch, Poppy works with Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Gmail, Outlook, iCloud Mail, Apple Health, Reminders, Contacts, iMessage, WhatsApp, Uber, and Instacart.

It uses a Mac app to access iMessage. Users must connect at minimum their location to Poppy’s app. The service can track flights and alert users to changes. It can also nudge users when it is time to take medication.

Poppy’s most powerful feature is its proactive suggestions, such as recommending a walk in a nearby park during a 30-minute calendar gap or factoring in a friend’s food preferences from past messages when suggesting restaurants for brunch. 25 million in pre-seed funding. The pre-seed funding round was led by Kindred Ventures.

Poppy's team consists of four people. The company is based in San Francisco. The company says users' data is encrypted when stored in its database. Poppy has a zero-retention policy when it uses cloud-based LLMs for its suggestions.

Kambampati hopes to switch to using local, on-device AI models within two to three years. "My hope, my dream is — within two to three years from now, when our devices have much more powerful compute, and the models get much smaller, cheaper and more high quality — eventually we can have all of this running on our own devices, and there won't even be a need to hit the servers," Kambampati said.

TechCrunch reported that Poppy pays attention so users don’t have to.

Users can open the app or glance at its widgets to see meetings or tasks. They can also message Poppy with questions or requests, almost as if they had a personal assistant working on their behalf. Sarah Perez has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011.

She wrote the article detailing Poppy’s features and Kambampati’s background.