Shiven Dave, ConscioussAI — An AI Agent That Runs Your Phone
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In mid-2024, Shiven Dave was an aerospace engineering student facing tens of thousands of cells of wind tunnel test data. He built a pipeline that let an AI watch his screen and answer his questions, named it Jarvis after his lifelong Iron Man fandom, and planned to keep it to himself, until his cousin and co-founder, Manas, talked him out of it. Today it’s ConscioussAI, a 12-person startup built by friends who met at De Anza College. Mash caught up with Shiven at San Jose State as the team launched what Shiven calls the first mobile agent that runs your whole phone. He demoed it live, booking an Uber to the Golden Gate Bridge from his Apple Watch, and talked through charging from day one, pitching at campus tables, keeping every chat on your device, and the tunnel vision that nearly cost them the move to mobile.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
“Iron Man did not distribute Jarvis”
Shiven, I’m so excited to have you here. How did ConscioussAI start?
ConscioussAI started in my bedroom in mid-2024. I’m an aerospace engineering student, and I had a class where I had to go over tens of thousands of cells of wind tunnel testing data. That was a lot of menial work, and “AI agent” was not even a term out there back in 2024. So I came up with a pipeline through which AI could always watch my screen, and I could ask it questions. It became my tutor, and it was helping not just me but a lot of fellow aerospace engineering students. Then my cousin, Manas, saw that this wasn’t just something aerospace engineering students would like. Every student would like it.
How do you get from there to a startup? That’s a big jump.
First of all, we named that product Jarvis. I’m a big Iron Man fan, and the thing that fascinated me most about Iron Man was not just his suit. It was this AI that differentiated him from the whole world. So the way I used to think was: Iron Man did not distribute Jarvis to the whole world, so I should not either.
That’s when my co-founder, who’s also my cousin, came into play. She said, “This is not something you should keep to yourself.” There was already some sort of proof of concept — hundreds of students were using it at SJSU — so we decided to turn this into a business.
A lot of people think, “I’ve got to get a degree, get a job and pay off my student loans.” What made you two believe you could actually do this?
To be really honest, it was the love for innovation. I really like innovating things. I really like machines. And to be here at San Jose State, in the heart of Silicon Valley, at this specific time — I think the AI era is one of the best times to innovate and create. This was too big of an opportunity for us to miss. Second, I come from a business family. Generations of my family have been in business, so that business mindset was always there in me. Innovation plus that business mindset is what led us to make ConscioussAI into a proper startup, a company.
“It has become a tax”
If what you say you can do is true, it’s mind-blowing. How did you get from your bedroom to the announcement today?
We were initially a desktop AI agent. Our whole idea revolved around AI getting out of being a chatbot and doing agentic actions for you. ConscioussAI is essentially a technology that integrates with any operating system. That’s not just limited to your macOS or your Windows, but also your phone.
Seeing how fast the AI market is evolving, we realized our technology is not just limited to desktop. It’s also much better suited for mobile phones. So today we announced our ConscioussAI mobile application, and that’s the first mobile agent to run your whole phone for you.
An actual AI agent that lives on your phone, that you tell to do things and it actually does them — that’s a big promise. The Siri promise was broken. Can you fulfill it?
Definitely. Uber is just an entry-level example. ConscioussAI can control multiple applications on your phone. To get any simple task done across your phone, you have to go through multiple taps — sometimes five, up to 30 taps. That’s something we hate at ConscioussAI. Interface was designed to help you, but nowadays it has become a tax.
What we want is to turn your whole phone into a simple chat interface. Anything you want, you don’t just chat — you can just ask it to do. Unlike the promise Siri made, we can actually do these things for you.
What’s the best use case you can show us today?
I’ll go with my favorite one. I’m not even going to use my phone to control my phone. I have my Apple Watch right here. ConscioussAI is not just on your phone; it’s also on your Apple Watch. “Hey, Conscious, can you book an Uber to Golden Gate Bridge for me?” It gets the task, and it’s doing it.
Is Uber the most common use case, or are you just doing it because I asked?
It’s actually one of the most used ones. Most people use it to shop for groceries. A lot of people use it to share their screen. And one of the funniest use cases I’ve seen is students who share their screen, go through Instagram reels, and ask, “Hey, Conscious, help me comment on this.”
And you see, it opened up Uber and found the rides for you.
“Charging money from day one”
Students are kind of early adopters. They’ll use it if it’s free. But making money is the goal. Have you started making money? Do you have a business model?
Yes, we do. The way we make money is through subscriptions. We started as a B2C company, and our primary objective is still focused on the B2C side. We obviously have a free plan: you can try ConscioussAI free for one month. Then there’s a $7 entry-level plan for someone who’s just curious — and surprisingly, the plan is also named Curious. Then there’s a $22 plan, Aware, where you get access to more models, since ConscioussAI is multimodal. And the $30 Max plan has the most credits and usage, for heavy users.
Do you know yet which plans people want most, or is it too early?
To be really honest, it’s just been two days since we launched. We have close to a thousand users. Because we’re available globally and currencies differ, most people are trying the $7 plan for now, just to explore what ConscioussAI is about.
But the interesting part is a feature we call pay-per-use. After you run out of your limit, instead of paying a crazy amount of money like you do with other AI models — $200, $100 — you just add $2, $3, $5, as much as you want, and you get to use the application for that exact amount. So even though people are on a $7 plan, we see top-ups of up to $30, $40. And this is just two days after our launch. I think we’re on the right track.
Congratulations. I’ve seen a lot of startups spend years without ever asking anyone for money. Tell me about your team.
I consider myself very lucky that my team is the people I love the most. These are my best friends. We met each other at a community college — we started at De Anza College, and five of my founding team members met each other there. We’re currently 12 people: four of us are in India, and we have eight people here. Most of us are students.
This isn’t the first startup my team and I have worked on. We always had that thing in us. We had a previous startup, and we learned a lot there about how to manage. That’s where the experience of charging money from day one comes in — having a business plan, having a subscription. It was the same team: me; my cousin Manas, who’s my co-founder; and our CTO, Emiliano, who I met at De Anza. He was the first friend I made, on my first day of community college. Then there’s someone else I met at community college who takes care of the finance stuff, and we have a dedicated CMO for all the marketing and outreach, who I also met at community college.
Some founders say building a team is one of their biggest challenges. What about someone who’s a little afraid of people, or coming to university for the first time? How do they find a group they can build with?
One thing that always worked out for me was participating in as many club activities and hackathons as I could. I met so many like-minded people who shared the same interests, the same passion, the same drive for innovation. I was very fortunate that I had my team. But for someone who’s just starting, finding a team and running a company is a very big commitment. Having a startup with a group of people is like raising a baby together.
So I would say: work on several projects, whether it’s hackathons or group projects, and see how the team bonding is. As long as the passion for the product and the drive for innovation is there, you will definitely find the right people along the way.
“We set up a table”
So it’s kind of like dating: build stuff together that’s not critical, and develop that trust. Now, you could say everyone in the world needs your app. But that’s the number one problem I see with new founders — if everyone needs it, it’s impossible to reach everyone in a financially prudent way. What hard choices are you making to go to market?
The biggest challenge in our marketing right now is the learning curve, the education part of the product. We live in Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley is way ahead. You can feel the evolution of AI here. Even the billboards you drive by are all AI. But as soon as we step out, it’s different.
For at least the first six months after launch, we’re very clear on our target: students, engineers, people who like to build, people like us. So we go to each campus in Northern California and Southern California and run university campaigns. We set up a table, we reach out and ask a lot of students what problems they face, and we give them a solution. And the solution for 95% of the problems we’ve encountered so far is ConscioussAI mobile and ConscioussAI desktop.
That not only validates the idea for us, it gives us a clear direction for marketing. It’s also very low-cost marketing for a very young startup, and an excellent team-bonding exercise. Through this, just by hitting universities in California, plus word of mouth, we’ve built a waitlist of more than 2,000 users.
Since you’re pitching and teaching it in person: most people don’t know about AI agents, or the difference between an LLM and an agent. How would you describe it to my mom? Can you draw it for us?
I’m really bad at drawing, which I should not say as an engineer. Your phone is a very powerful device — a computer that can do more than 10,000 things — but you only use it for maybe 20 to 40 things. And the interfaces keep changing with every update. The brightness button that was right here moves someplace else. For elder people, that’s an extra step to figure out. I see my grandfather using his phone for just very specific use cases.
With just one AI application installed, ConscioussAI turns your whole phone into a simple chat or talk interface. If you want to explore more of your phone’s potential, so many things require unnecessary taps, even something as simple as ordering groceries.
Like when we were doing the demo and wanted to record the screen. I could have just said, “Start recording the screen,” instead of “Where’s that button?”
Exactly. Instead of figuring out a whole interface, which I think is a tax in this world, you just ask your phone: Can you turn on screen recording? Can you send this message to someone? Can you order this for me?
“A lot of people think that iOS has these strict restrictions of controlling third-party applications. But what they don’t realize is that it is just a locked front door with six unlocked doors.”
— Shiven Dave · Inspiring Founders Podcast, S2, Ep. 02
“It’s a co-pilot”
Siri mostly tells me how to do things. I say I want to start a recording and it says, “Open up the recorder.” Is there a limit? Can ConscioussAI do anything on your phone that you can do?
Except making payments and final decisions. ConscioussAI is designed to help you and keep you in the loop. It’s not an autopilot. It’s a co-pilot. It does things for you, but you can watch it do things, so if at any time you think this is not something you want, you can stop the agent. What you described with Siri is the problem with not just Siri, but all of the LLMs out there. They tell you how to do things. ConscioussAI does it for you.
That makes sense for functions built into the phone — make my font bigger, turn up my volume. But how do you get to use other people’s apps? That seems impossible.
A lot of people think iOS has these strict restrictions on controlling third-party applications. But what they don’t realize is that it is just a locked front door with six unlocked doors. Apple provides features like shortcuts, deep links, app intents and so many things that, if you follow the right architecture and the right design, allow you to open and control third-party applications up to a limit.
And the biggest reason behind how we got the approval is the way we handle your data. I would go so far as to say 90% of the AI companies out there store your chats and your data on their servers. They have online models that do the tasks for you. ConscioussAI has an offline AI agent on your phone that does the task for you. Each and every chat you have with ConscioussAI is stored inside your device. It doesn’t even go to our servers. The offline model is also on your device, so you have complete control over it.
So in mom words: “Don’t worry, Mom, it’s safe.”
It’s safe. It’s secured. It’s private. And it’s just making your phone aware — that’s why the name ConscioussAI.
I consider myself bleeding-edge, but my hurdle has always been security and privacy. I’m afraid my data is going to leak, or that AI is going to do something bad. How do you help people get over that fear?
That’s the right question, and everyone should be asking it: what if AI can see all of my personal messages? That’s why most applications don’t get these approvals from iOS or Android.
We respect privacy a lot at ConscioussAI. We think all of your data, all of your chats — only you should have control over them. Not a company, not any frontier AI company. The reason we have these approvals is that we keep all of your chats on your phone by default. The actions happening outside the ConscioussAI application go through an offline AI agent that keeps every single thing inside your phone. It doesn’t let the ConscioussAI application or any frontier models get any of your data. That’s our biggest priority.
That reminds me of Apple taking a stand on encryption. You’re almost a security company. Is the message of security built into the product, or do people have to trust you or watch a video?
We are very proud and loud about our security measures and our offline capabilities. The moment you install ConscioussAI, it pops up that it keeps all of your data inside your phone. Even the memory and check-in features — for all the other AI applications they’re on by default; with ConscioussAI they’re off by default. Only if a user wants to opt in, to let it see some of your photos when you share them, for example, does ConscioussAI get access.
Is there any other hurdle people have to get over, beyond education and that fear?
I think those are the only ones we’ve found so far. When I use words like “operating system,” people think it’s software they might have to install. But it’s just an application from your App Store or Play Store. The design and architecture of the application keep everything protected. I would not say that’s a feature. It’s what the whole application is built around.
“Intelligence was never a problem”
What’s next? You started on desktop and moved to mobile, and I know you’re raising. If there are investors out there who want to get in on this, what are you looking for? Partners, advisors, money?
I think we’re looking for partners and advisors. One thing we’re lacking is the education piece I mentioned — finding the right marketing channels. This technology also has a lot of B2B potential, and we’re exploring B2B deals with big frontier companies. We need a serious amount of advice, and we need a lot of capital — that’s what we’re raising now — to educate and to scale. That’s our next focus.
We’re also not restricting ourselves to your mobile phone. We’re exploring the hardware space and AI. That’s the ultimate vision of the company. It was founded on the principle that your phones and your devices should give you back your attention, not take it away from you. That’s why we’re designing a physical AI hardware device that would just stick behind your phone and be a separate chat interface to control your phone. Over time, you wouldn’t even need to use your phone to do so many things. That’s what we’re working toward.
One last question, about Jarvis. My favorite scenes in the movie are when Tony Stark interacts with Jarvis holographically, and the screens are gone. Google didn’t know it was going to be Google when it started. So tell me your unbridled dream: ten years from now, how does ConscioussAI make the world better?
That’s a very deep question. It all relates to Jarvis. Growing up, Iron Man played a big role — all of my projects in school, and in cosplays I always used to dress up as Iron Man. With how fast AI is evolving — from 2022, when ChatGPT first launched, to 2026, the AI race has pushed innovation so far — I can tell you what I see five years from now: less screens, more accessible AI, physical AI around you everywhere. That’s the vision ConscioussAI is heading toward.
The name comes from this: intelligence was never the problem. It was awareness — awareness in AI about you, that the user is doing this and needs assistance with that. That’s the problem we’re solving. And having an application like ConscioussAI on your phone doesn’t just help us or the users like us. It also helps a lot of people who are disabled use their phone — veterans who have lost their hands, people who have vision problems. They can use it hands-free. Making AI more accessible, making AI more aware of you, so it can assist you from everywhere: that’s what we’re focusing on.
There are students at San Jose State, Santa Clara, even De Anza watching this. What one or two things would you tell an up-and-coming founder?
The first thing I’ve realized over this period is: don’t stick to one idea, one concept of your product. When you build something, you get some sort of tunnel vision — “This is the product I’m building. This is going to be it.” Look at how Slack was founded. It was actually a messaging feature for a gaming company, if I’m not wrong, and then they realized the technology was much better suited for corporates, for people to just chat.
That’s what we learned too. We were very focused on desktop when we started, and we were very ahead in the race. But over time, we figured out the challenges, and that tunnel vision stopped the innovation in my team, and in me. When we stepped back and looked at the market with a broader vision, we realized how much potential this technology has.
Second, everything will push you to give up. As a founder, it’s not at all easy. It’s been more than a year since we’ve been working on ConscioussAI, and it’s a very difficult job. You’ll question yourself, and everyone’s going to question you. But don’t give up. Keep your belief in yourself and in your product really strong, and at some point you will meet your goal.
More conversations with founders on the Inspiring Founders Podcast.