Medal Raises $13M to Build Contextual AI Assistant Highlight

Medal, a startup known for its video game clipping product, has raised $13 million at a valuation of $333 million. Investors include Horizons Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Peak6, and Arcadia Investment Partners.

Introducing Highlight

The company has unveiled Highlight, a new cross-platform desktop app acting as a contextual AI assistant. This app captures on-screen content and lets users ask questions to a large language model (LLM) based on that context.

Core Technology and Vision

Henry Gladwyn, a partner at OMERS Ventures, explained, “The core Medal technology is based around the idea of understanding what’s going on on somebody’s device, whether that be the video, the audio, and the stuff going on around it. That was originally used for clipping. Now, the company is applying that to LLMs for prompting, which is a clever use,” Gladwyn views Medal as a product for recording the best bits of virtual life, with Highlight being a natural extension of this idea.

Comparison with Other Tech Giants

Various companies have attempted to build useful assistants leveraging on-screen information. Google has developed Google Now, Google Assistant, and now Gemini. Apple introduced Apple Intelligence to understand on-screen contextual information at its WWDC last month. Microsoft is also integrating generative AI with features like Windows Recall.

Functionality of Highlight

Highlight aims to bring similar functionality to the desktop. It lives as a floating button on your desktop, capturing screen content when hovered over and passing it to different models. Users can ask questions using tools like ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Perplexity. The app pre-populates questions to assist users in getting started. Capturing happens locally without storing any content. Medal is also developing a local ChatGPT-like assistant that could eventually run on the user’s device.

Additional Features

Besides on-screen content, Highlight can use documents and system audio memory as context. Medal is creating a local transcription app for meetings, similar to tools like Granola, Limitless, and Krisp.

Open Platform and Developer Ecosystem

Pim de Witte, co-founder of Medal, highlighted the company’s vision of integrating Medal.tv’s clip capture tech with AI. The aim is to create an open platform connecting users with assistants, models, and interfaces. Medal is also developing an open platform for developers to deploy their apps on Highlight, similar to the Raycast launcher app for Mac but available on both Mac and Windows.

Future Plans

OMERS Ventures’ Gladwyn noted that Highlight’s independence gives it an advantage, as it doesn’t aim to draw users into a single ecosystem. Medal.tv will continue to receive support and new features, but some staff will be dedicated to Highlight. Highlight is currently free, with plans to monetize through an app store model and a premium subscription for exclusive features. Medal is also offering grants of up to $30,000 for developers, along with access to the Highlight team to develop the app ecosystem.