Can AI provide a greater filesystem and workspace for private productivity? That’s what a latest startup, Fabric, launching today, goals to supply. The corporate has designed an AI-powered service that helps you organize your documents and other files, and works as a house for all of your information that you may then query against using an AI assistant.
The service has some similarities with how Google’s Bard AI can now tap into your Google apps, like Gmail, Drive, Docs, Maps, YouTube and more, or how the startup Rewind creates a searchable record of every little thing you’ve done by recording your computer usage. But as an alternative of being limited to only Google apps, as Bard is, or intrusively recording every little thing you do, Fabric is supposed to be opt-in and works with a spread of files and uploads. Today, that features any text-based document, any image, your bookmarks and any piece of web content with a link, with support for audio and video to soon come, in addition to connections with other cloud services.
Image Credits: Fabric
Founded in 2022 by London-based software engineer Jonathan Bree, Fabric originally began as an idea to create a “multiplayer” collaborative web browser. That idea now lives on inside Fabric, as users can create dedicated shared spaces where they’ll collaborate on documents together and chat. For instance, the spaces could possibly be used to share project files, plan a visit together, gather inspiration, review a design and more, the corporate suggests, which has some similarities to the online browser Arc’s shared folders and spaces.
To make use of Fabric, you’ll be able to either upload individual files or folders, as with Google Drive or Dropbox, but you may also add links, and even compose a straightforward text note directly in Fabric’s interface. Then, you should use the built-in search box to seek out that information later, and even query an AI chatbot, Fabric Assistant, to provide help to discover the knowledge you would like using natural language queries. The latter may be helpful in the event you don’t remember the precise name of the file you’re searching for, and it could find screenshots you’ve saved by understanding what’s within the image or if there’s text within the image it could read.
Image Credits: Fabric
Powering Fabric is a gaggle of around a dozen AI technologies, including OpenAI’s automatic speech recognition system Whisper for deciphering audio, plus AI models from Anthropic and others. In-house, the corporate built its own proprietary “unwrap engine” that detects the file type after which applies the proper tool for the job required.
“It puts every little thing right into a universal format, after which it’s all available inside this workspace,” explains Bree. “So you’ll be able to almost consider it a bit like a pc desktop from the longer term, or operating system from the longer term, where every little thing is there and you’ll be able to actually work with it,” he says. “You’ll be able to open the content, eat it, put it right into a shared space, share this space with a co-worker, whatever. It’s not a search engine on your data. It has search, nevertheless it’s more just like the sort of product that Dropbox must have made,” Bree adds.
Every little thing in Fabric is encrypted in transit and at rest — the identical model utilized by Dropbox, Bree also notes. The corporate has not done a security audit yet, because it’s still constructing, but plans to within the near future because it adds support for connecting more services, like Google Drive, Notion and Dropbox.
Fabric works via the online, as a browser extension, as a desktop app or as a native mobile app, so you’ll be able to access the service wherever you go. Bree believes the goal demographic for Fabric today is the “prosumer” — that’s researchers, creatives and other power users who’re switching contexts throughout their day, like freelancers bouncing between different projects, for instance.
Image Credits: Fabric
“We’ve designed it for the sort of practical reality of: individuals are busy. People, actually, in point of fact, will not be organized,” says Bree. “And in addition, information lives in so many places. You’re taking a traditional tool like Notion, and it’s a clean slate. But what about my bookmarks? What about my screenshots? What about all the opposite places information lives? We’ve taken this latest approach where it’s a house for all information…our ambition is to make every place your information lives connectable,” he adds.
The startup is dropping its waitlist today, making Fabric available to early adopters who need to check out the service via the online or apps. (The iOS mobile app will not be published to the general public app store, but is accessible through TestFlight currently.) Ahead of today’s launch, Fabric has been in testing with hundreds of users.
The business model involves multi-tier plans that range from a modest $6 monthly for 500GB as much as $50 monthly 4TB.
“So you should use it in a Dropbox-esque way,” Bree points out.
A distant team of three, based in each the U.S. and the U.K., Fabric’s founding team also includes Leonard Marcq and Ivo Silva. The startup has raised a pre-seed round of $1 million led by Seedcamp, with Acequia Capital and other angels participating, including those from Figma and others with AI expertise.