Recently, Flower Labs, a startup powered by Y Combinator, announced the launch of a preview version of its distributed cloud platform Flower Intelligence. The platform focuses on serving AI models and has gained popularity with Mozilla as an Assist Summary plugin for supporting its upcoming Thunderbird email client. This cooperation marks an important step in the practical application of Flower Intelligence in the field of AI.
Flower Intelligence is unique in its ability to perform local AI processing on mobile devices, personal computers, and web applications, and seamlessly switch to the private cloud with user authorization. This design not only ensures the speed and privacy of applications running AI models locally, but also flexibly utilizes Flower's cloud capabilities when more computing resources are needed. This hybrid mode provides users with greater flexibility and security.
While tech giants like Microsoft and Apple have adopted similar technologies in their operating systems and devices, Flower Labs is one of the first companies to build a hybrid cloud-native AI platform entirely based on an open model. Its platform supports a variety of open models, including Meta's Llama series, China's AI laboratory DeepSeek model, and Mistral model. This openness and diversity give Flower Intelligence a unique competitive advantage in the AI field.
Flower Labs also particularly emphasizes the security of its cloud service Flower Confidential Remote Compute. The service uses end-to-end encryption and other advanced technologies to ensure that users’ sensitive data are fully protected. Ryan Sipes, director of management at Mozilla Thunderbird, said Flower Intelligence enables Mozilla to process the most sensitive data locally while providing efficient AI solutions.
Starting this Tuesday, developers can apply for early access to Flower Intelligence. Flower Labs plans to launch the service more widely in the near future, and introduce features such as model customization, fine-tuning and "federal" training. These new features will further enhance the flexibility and practicality of the platform and meet the needs of different users.
In addition, Flower Labs will hold an online and offline summit in London on March 26, when more details and features about Flower Intelligence will be announced. This event will provide developers and industry experts with an opportunity to gain insight into the platform and explore its future direction in the AI field.
Since its inception in 2023, Flower Labs has raised about $23.6 million in venture capital from investors including Felicis, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue, Betaworks and Pioneer Fund. In the early days, the open source browser Brave also established a partnership with it, further promoting Flower Labs' influence in the field of AI.
The launch of Flower Intelligence marks a major breakthrough in AI technology in on-premises and cloud processing. Its hybrid model not only improves the efficiency and privacy protection of AI applications, but also provides developers with more space for innovation. With the continuous development of the platform and the improvement of functions, Flower Intelligence is expected to become an important driving force in the AI field.