Personal Agent Startup Team: Proactivity Is Key, Warns of Hype Risk

In an interview published on Oct 16, 2026, the core team of Today AI, a startup founded by Qi Junyuan, shared updates and industry views on personal agents. The company's global version launched on Sept 8, and the China version on Sept 24, after multiple funding rounds totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

Qi said proactivity is the most important trait for a personal agent, and personalization is a prerequisite. He listed five key competitive factors: model, personalization, infrastructure, product definition, and user acquisition.

The team also cautioned that the current maturity and commercial value of personal AI assistants may not match their valuations and hype, suggesting the sector could see volatility.

Qi previously founded Teambition and worked at Alibaba and ByteDance before starting Today AI. The company began training its own model earlier than planned after finding that some new models excelled at coding but regressed in conversational interaction.