Three former Google X scientists aim to give you a second brain virtually — not in the sci-fi or chip-in-your-head sense — but through an AI-powered app that gains context by listening to everything you say in the background. Their startup, TwinMind, has raised $5.7 million in seed funding and released an Android version, along with a new AI speech model. It also has an iPhone version.
Co-founded in March 2024 by Daniel George (CEO) and his former Google X colleagues Sunny Tang and Mahi Karim (both CTOs), TwinMind runs in the background, capturing ambient speech (with user permission) to build a personal knowledge graph.
By turning spoken thoughts, meetings, lectures and conversations into structured memory, the app can generate AI-powered notes, to-dos, and answers. It works offline, processes audio in real-time to transcribe on-device, and can capture audio continuously for 16–17 hours without draining the device’s battery, the founders say. The app can also back up user data so conversations can be recovered if the device is lost, though users can opt-out of that. It also supports real-time translation in over 100 languages.
TwinMind differentiates itself from AI meeting note-takers like Otter, Granola, and Fireflies by capturing audio passively in the background all day. To make this possible, the team built a low-level service in pure Swift that runs natively on the iPhone. In contrast, many competitors use React Native and rely on cloud-based processing, which Apple restricts from running in the background for extended periods, George said in an exclusive interview.
“We spent about six to seven months last year just perfecting this audio capture continuously and getting there to find a lot of hacks around Apple’s walled garden,” he told TechCrunch.
George left Google X in 2020 and got the idea for TwinMind in 2023 when was working at JPMorgan as Vice President and Applied AI Lead, attending back-to-back meetings each day. To save time, he built a script that captured audio, transcribed it on his iPad, and fed it into ChatGPT — which began to understand his projects and even generate usable code. Impressed by the results, he shared it with friends and posted about it on Blind, where others showed interest but did not want something running on their work laptops. That led him to build an app that could run on a personal phone, quietly listening during meetings to gather useful context.
In addition to the mobile app, TwinMind offers a Chrome extension that gathers additional context through browser activity. Using vision AI, it can visually scan open tabs and interpret content from various platforms, including email, Slack, and Notion.
Techcrunch event Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025 Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before Sept 26 to save up to $668. Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025 Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before Sept 26 to save up to $668. San Francisco | REGISTER NOW
The startup even used the extension itself to shortlist interns from over 850 applications they received this summer.
“We opened all the LinkedIn profiles and CVs of the 854 applicants in browser tabs, then asked the Chrome extension to rank the best candidates,” George said. “It did a fantastic job — that’s how we hired our final four interns.”
... continue reading