Flower Labs launches a new service that automatically switches from local to cloud AI

Flower Labs, a Y Combinator-backed startup, on Tuesday launched a preview of its distributed cloud platform for serving AI models, called Flower Intelligence. Mozilla is already using it to power the upcoming Assist summarization add-on for its Thunderbird email client. What makes Flower Intelligence unique, Flower Labs said in a post on X, is that it can drive on-device AI mobile, PC, and web apps that automatically hand off to a private cloud when needed (with a user’s permission). Apps default to an AI model running locally for speed and privacy but switch to Flower’s cloud when they require extra computational oomph. Companies like Microsoft and Apple have adopted similar approaches across their operating systems and devices. However, Flower is one of the first to build a hybrid cloud-local AI platform entirely on open models, including models from Meta’s Llama family, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek, and Mistral. Flower Labs claims that its cloud, the Flower Confidential Remote Compute ... Read full article.