jo

The personal AI agent that keeps up with your work and life.

jo is a personal AI agent that keeps up with your work and life, surfaces what matters, and helps you follow through. It remembers relevant context, works proactively, and supports recurring workflows through autopilot while keeping you in control.
Active Founders
Pradeep Elankumaran
Pradeep Elankumaran
Founder/CEO
I work on consumer companies. Co-founded: jo (w24), farmstead (s16), kicksend (s11)
Former Founders
Kevin Li
Kevin Li
Founder
CMO @ jo (YC W24), Co-Founder @ Farmstead (YC S16), intern @ Kabam. 🟤 in judo, love gymnastics rings, and video games 🎮
Company Launches
jo 1.0 - a personal AI that actually knows you
See original launch post

Update: jo is now generally available on Mac and the web, with no waitlist. It keeps up with your work and life, maintains useful context over time, produces proactive briefings, and supports recurring workflows through autopilot. Family support is available today, while native mobile apps remain planned. See the current product at askjo.ai.

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TL;DR - jo is a personal AI that runs on your Mac and a private cloud machine we host for you. It knows your life, improves itself autonomously, chats via  Telegram and WhatsApp, and never shares your data. Less "chatbot" and more "a second brain that does things."

https://youtu.be/7u6vxYF44rI

Hey YC! We're Kevin and Pradeep, co-founders for a decade and consumer builders since the mid-2000s. For the last few years, we’ve iterated on an experience that’s zero compromise. It’s easy to use and gives consumers control over their privacy. 

🧠 jo knows you. jo improves over time as it learns your preferences, kids' schedules, travel habits, and work context. It reviews its own notes nightly and gets better as you use it. We’ve found the continuity over time to be immensely useful.

🏠 Your machine, your data. Every jo macOS desktop app user also gets a dedicated cloud machine and storage. Personal data (photos, local files) never leaves your Mac without approval. Powerful cloud inference runs the best available models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Grok, Kimi with more on the way) on top of cloud providers that are barred from training on your data. 

10x faster, everywhere you already are. Voice on your Mac. Text & voice on  Telegram and Whatsapp. Consistent  memory and personality, 24/7.

What it does

  • On your Mac, jo notices your browsing patterns and group chats, then clips related content (runs locally, doesn’t leave your Mac).
  • Sends morning briefings with weather, calendar, and reminders pulled from Gmail and Google Calendar, continuing on from where you left off the night before.
  • Controls a real browser with anti-fingerprinting and a high success rate to check availability, compare prices, and research.
  • Searches across every messaging platform conversation(including groups) and email to find things you've forgotten.
  • Runs background automations you set once: "Every Thursday, send me a ideas for what to do this weekend"
  • jo will not send emails or messages, but will draft and suggest your emails (Gmail).

 

The self-organizing digital you

  • Unlike other AI assistants, jo self improves to maximize  usefulness and fun.
  • Scan back as many months of your browser and messenger history as you want for jo to work with. 
  • Scheduled and autonomous recurring work compounds data and preferences, all stored on machines you have access to with strict exfil policies.

 

👉 Sign up for the beta: askjo.ai (first 100 people skip the onboarding and can download ASAP)

Other things jo does

  • Find Warriors v Lakers game tomorrow from my email, go on stubhub for tickets, pronounce them expensive, and suggest hockey games instead for that weekend to take a 9yo to.
  • Keep an eye on the “No Priors” podcast every day and send summaries in a specific format whenever there’s a new episode.
  • Mentioned a topic from a friend inside a group chat, found and did deep research on the topic when asked later. 
  • Scanned all Gmail receipts and learned a bunch of facts about our families’ preferences, guessed which family members each one applied to and used it for later gift selection.
  • Get the guest list from a Partiful invite in my messages
  • Built a profile of what we like to read and send us recommendations on a schedule
  • Import your OpenClaw folder and settings

Coming soon

Native mobile app, multiplayer (shared family/team assistants), trusted purchases, grocery shopping.

Built on open-source roots. We stand on the shoulders of giants and contribute back.

👉 Sign up for the beta: askjo.ai (first 100 people skip the onboarding and can download ASAP)

Please share your feedback. Ask us anything.

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Previous Launches
The personal AI agent that keeps up with your work and life.
Hear from the founders

What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?

jo is a personal AI agent for people who want help keeping up with work and life.

jo connects relevant context from conversations, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, contacts, messages, browser activity, and the Mac when users enable those sources. It uses that context to answer questions, produce daily briefings, surface reminders and follow-ups, keep projects warm, and support recurring workflows through autopilot.

Unlike a chatbot that starts fresh with every conversation, jo maintains context over time. It can work proactively, but it does not give itself unlimited authority over a user's accounts. Summaries and briefings can run automatically when configured. Sending messages, changing calendars, making purchases, sharing private information, and other consequential actions require user approval.

jo is available on Mac and the web. The Mac app requires Apple Silicon. People can also use the same jo account and memory through mobile web, Telegram, and WhatsApp. Native mobile apps are planned but are not available yet.

jo is private by design. Each user has isolated cloud infrastructure and storage where applicable. Relevant information is sent to jo's services and the selected model provider only when a request or enabled feature needs it. jo uses model-provider endpoints and terms designed for zero retention or equivalent no-retention and no-training treatment. jo does not train AI models on users' raw communications, Google Workspace content, screen context, or voice data.

jo is generally available with no waitlist. It supports individuals and families. Each family member has a separate private jo, memory, boundaries, cloud machine, and storage, with controlled sharing for coordination.

jo
Founded:2023
Batch:Spring 2026
Team Size:2
Status:
Active
Location:San Francisco
Primary Partner:Garry Tan