Sigil Wen, a Thiel Fellow and former Airchat developer, has launched Underdog, an AI assistant focused on local data processing. The beta version is currently available by invitation for Mac and Windows users, with support for Linux, iPhone, and Android devices expected in the future.
The assistant utilizes Husky, an inference engine designed to minimize data transfer between main and graphics chips. Underdog operates on a 27-billion parameter model fine-tuned from Qwen3.8 27B, which the developer claims performs comparably to Claude Opus 4.6 in specific benchmarks.
Underdog features built-in security, including the encryption of keys for authorized email and other accounts. The software runs entirely on-device, ensuring that user data remains on their own hardware rather than being sent to external data centers.
The startup, Conway Research, is backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Hummingbird, SV Angel, and the Anthology Fund. Angel investors include Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, Noam Brown, and Deedy Das.
The business model avoids subscriptions and advertising. Instead, the company plans to generate revenue by taking a percentage of payment transactions processed through Stripe when the AI assistant performs shopping or other financial tasks for the user.
