MacPaw Partners with Liquid AI to Provide On-Device Inference for Developers in Its App Store

MacPaw, a Ukrainian app developer, has partnered with Liquid AI to enhance its products by integrating locally hosted AI models, aiming to eventually offer this technology stack to other developers. Additionally, the company is gearing up its SetApp app store for AI applications, implementing credit-based plans for users.

At present, MacPaw is focusing on its AI assistant Eney, launched last year, and is now in the process of developing a local version. To facilitate this, they have engaged Liquid AI to create an on-device inference system named Elix, alongside a local memory system.

“We design an architecture tailored to the hardware prior to training our models. This enables us to create an optimized version of intelligence that functions directly on the device, offering benefits such as improved privacy and security,” stated Ramin Hasani, co-founder and CEO of Liquid AI, in a TechCrunch interview.

Oleksandr Kosovan, the CEO of MacPaw, pointed out that locally hosted AI models will enable users to manage assistants and agent-driven workflows even without internet connectivity.

Notably, Apple also provides its own local models to developers; however, Hasani contends that Liquid AI’s models prioritize delivering enhanced performance across various functionalities.

“We are developing a customization framework for our models, allowing them to tap into user feedback and improve over time based on data. Our goal is for these models to be flexible and evolve in intelligence,” Hasani elaborated.

MacPaw aims to highlight AI applications within its subscription-based app store, SetApp, which currently boasts over 150,000 paying users.

Once the local processing architecture with Liquid AI is fully functional, MacPaw plans to share this technology with developers, enabling on-device inference in their applications. Kosovan mentioned that the platform will also give access to other cloud models from companies like Google, serving as a comprehensive resource for developers.

MacPaw is already testing a credit-based pricing system for its app store, allowing users to perform a set number of AI operations based on their credit balance and task complexity.