Medal, a company known for its video game clipping technology, has successfully raised $13 million from investors like Horizons Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Peak6, and Arcadia Investment Partners. This fundraising effort values the company at $333 million. The startup is expanding its horizons with the launch of Highlight, a new cross-platform desktop app that serves as a contextual AI assistant.
Introducing Highlight: Your New AI Assistant
Highlight is designed to capture content on your screen and let you ask questions based on that context using a large language model (LLM). This is a shift from Medal’s original technology, which focused on clipping video game highlights. Now, Medal is applying this tech to LLMs for more versatile use.
What Investors Are Saying
Henry Gladwyn, a partner at OMERS Ventures, explained that Medal’s core technology is about understanding what’s happening on a user’s device. Initially used for video game clipping, this technology is now being used to enhance LLMs.
“Medal’s technology was originally for clipping, but now it’s being applied to LLMs for prompting, which is a clever use,” Gladwyn told TechCrunch. He sees Medal as a tool for capturing the best moments of virtual life, not just a gaming company.
How Highlight Works
Highlight aims to provide a useful assistant by leveraging on-screen information. Unlike other attempts from Google, Apple, and Microsoft, Highlight focuses on the desktop experience. The app appears as a floating button on your screen. When you hover over it, it captures the on-screen content and uses it as context for different models.
You can ask questions using various tools like ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Perplexity. The app even pre-populates some questions to help you get started. Importantly, the capture happens locally, and the app does not store any content. Medal is also developing its own ChatGPT-like assistant that could run locally on your device.
Apart from on-screen content, Highlight can also use documents and system audio as context. The company is developing a local transcription app for meetings, similar to tools like Granola, Limitless, and Krisp.
The Development Journey
Pim de Witte, one of Medal’s co-founders, said that the idea to merge Medal.tv’s clip capture technology with AI started last year.
“We know that recording activities are going to be important for operating systems. We have seen some big tech companies making such moves. We want to provide an open platform to connect users with assistants, models, and interfaces,” de Witte said.
He emphasized that the goal is to make an AI app that people of all ages can use, even if they are not tech-savvy. The app will show contextual prompt suggestions based on the captured content.
Building an Open Platform
The company is also creating an open platform for developers to deploy their own apps on the Highlight platform. This is somewhat similar to the Raycast launcher app for Mac, which allows the installation of developer-made extensions. However, a key difference is that Highlight is available on both Mac and Windows.
OMERS Ventures’ Gladwyn noted that Highlight has an advantage because it is independent and not tied to any specific ecosystem.
Looking Ahead
Medal.tv remains a successful product, and the company plans to continue developing it with new features. However, some staff will be redirected to work on Highlight. While Highlights is currently free, de Witte plans to monetize it through an app store model. The startup is also considering a premium subscription for exclusive features and local-first models.
To support developers, Medal is offering grants of up to $30,000 and access to the Highlight team to help develop the app ecosystem.
