Published: October 13, 2025 at 3:56 pm
A startup developing a desktop-native AI assistant that learns from users’ real workflows has raised an uncapped £940,000 pre-seed round backed by a roster of high-profile investors.
San Francisco-based Attention.inc was founded by 19-year-old Canadian Aidan Guo and 23-year-old German Julian Windeck, who graduated from the University of Cambridge.
Guo previously ran footwear resale group PremeProfits and co-founded sustainable stationery startup Fern before leaving Carnegie Mellon to build Attention in San Francisco.
Windeck brings research experience from Cambridge, MIT and Berkeley, focusing on distributed systems and computer vision.
The founding team also includes graduates from Cambridge and ETH Zurich, as well as social media creator Cole Lee.
The round gained attention and participation from several key industry figures, including Lukas Haas (DeepMind, Sequoia Scout), Marvin von Hagen and Felix Schlegal (co-founders of Interaction), Silas Alberti (founding team, Cognition), Village Global, Liquid 2 Ventures, Everyday Intelligence and Bryan Pellegrino (co-founder, LayerZero).
The company is building an AI co-pilot designed to automate repetitive, multi-app desktop tasks.
Its software observes user behaviour to anticipate actions, streamline sequences and is expected to handle certain tasks autonomously.