a16z backs Conway's Underdog, an AI that runs entirely on your device
What's the deal? Conway ResearchDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised funding from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Khosla Ventures, Hummingbird VC, and other investors to build Underdog, a private AI assistant that runs fully on personal devices like Macs and iPhones with no data sent to external servers. Founder Sigil Wen announced the backing on October 2, 2026. The round size was not disclosed.
What's Underdog? It is Conway's first product, pitched as capable, free, and private at once. The lineup includes Woof, a 4-billion-parameter model that takes up less than 2.5GB, and a larger Underdog 27B, which Conway says is designed to outperform frontier models such as Claude Opus 4.6 and reportedly beats it on certain benchmarks while running on consumer hardware.
Under the hood: Conway built custom inference engines tuned for Apple Silicon. It says these run up to 4.5 times faster than Apple's own MLX framework, processing up to 730 tokens per second on MacBooks. The assistant also has agentic capabilities, meaning it can take actions on a user's behalf.
Who's behind it? Wen was a 2025 Thiel Fellow and previously co-created AirchatDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → alongside Naval Ravikant, the investor and AngelList co-founder. In February 2026, he published an essay titled "Web 4.0" that drew 10 million views within 48 hours. His work has focused on on-device infrastructure, the thesis Conway now aims to turn into a product.
Why it matters: Cloud assistants face a structural privacy problem — to answer you, they must see what you ask. Keeping that material on-device sidesteps the issue rather than managing it; there is no server breach to fear if the server never sees the data. Running models locally also shifts compute costs onto hardware users already own, which helps explain how Conway could offer a capable assistant for free.
What could go wrong? The benchmark win over Claude Opus 4.6 applies to certain tests, not across the board. Conway's speed figures are tied to Apple Silicon, giving Underdog strong home turf but potentially narrowing its reach next to cloud tools that run in any browser.
The signal: On-device AI is drawing serious venture attention, with top-tier firms betting that privacy and zero marginal cost can compete with the frontier labs running in the cloud.
Read more: cryptobriefing.com
Image credit: topten5
