SYDNEY, Nov. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Miroma Project Factory (MPF) is proud to announce the successful completion of the Technical Feasibility Assessment (TFA) and Proof of Concept (POC) for an AI-powered vaping cessation support tool designed specifically for young Australians aged 14 to 25, in collaboration with Cancer Council NSW.
With vaping rates rising and traditional cessation tools failing to connect with younger audiences, this early-stage work represents a crucial step in ensuring any eventual AI solution is both effective and safe. By focusing first on technical feasibility, the project team has been able to identify opportunities, assess risks, and set clear boundaries for responsible AI use before committing resources to full-scale development and complex training.
Developed in close collaboration with young people, health experts, and youth organisations, the concept is for a chatbot that offers accessible, non-judgmental guidance in a voice young people can relate to. It would include goal setting, personalised messages, milestone tracking, and escalation support when needed, all designed to feel like a conversation with a peer rather than a lecture.
"This isn't about telling young people what to do, it's about listening to what they need," said Kat Robinson, CEO of Miroma Project Factory. "By thoroughly testing feasibility and boundaries first, we're ensuring any final product is aligned with both youth needs and responsible technology principles."
This project was backed by research, informed by experience, it builds on a national co-design process involving over 150 young Australians, facilitated by Cancer Council NSW and supported by partners including U1, MASS LBP, and Avion. The research confirmed that young people want help to quit but they want it on their terms.
The strongest demand came for tools that are accessible on mobile, available 24/7, and allow users to check in with themselves, track progress, and receive encouragement without shame or pressure. More than 80% of surveyed young people said they would use a tool like this if it were available today.
The chatbot experience will respond directly to those insights - offering a highly personalised quit journey that feels safe, supportive, and youth-led.
This proof of concept sets the stage for scale, the foundation for a broader digital vaping cessation platform designed to meet the needs of diverse young people across Australia. The vision is clear: build a national digital service that combines empathy, evidence, and technology to reduce harm and increase access to support - particularly for those who may never engage with traditional help-seeking pathways.
MPF was pivotal in contributing to strategic technical planning, user experience design, content development, and communications positioning - ensuring the prototype is not only viable, but built to inform future partnerships, funding pathways, and national scale-up.
About Cancer Council NSW
Cancer Council NSW is a leading not-for-profit organisation dedicated to a cancer-free future. Through research, education, advocacy and support, Cancer Council NSW works to reduce the impact of cancer in communities across New South Wales and beyond. Their tobacco control initiatives include national leadership on vaping research, cessation tools, and youth engagement.
About Miroma Project Factory (MPF)
MPF is a multi-award-winning digital strategy and product studio that delivers innovative digital solutions across web, platforms, and systems. Specialising in purposeful technology, MPF works at the intersection of strategy, design, and engineering to create impactful digital products for organisations ready to lead. With deep expertise in healthcare, MPF helps clients scale responsibly, communicate clearly, and connect meaningfully with their audiences. MPF is the development studio behind the multi award-winning My QuitBuddy app for the Department of Health. For more information, visit www.theprojectfactory.com.
For media enquiries, interviews or partnership opportunities, please contact:
Miroma Project Factory
info@theprojectfactory.com
Tiana Vourliotis
Cancer Council NSW
tiana.vourliotis@nswcc.org.au
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Reaching Young People with Real-Time, Human-Centred Support: Cancer Council to Launch AI for Youth Vaping Cessation
Pocket-size device supports up to 120B models locally with 0 token fees, without requiring cloud or high-end GPU
DOVER, Del., March 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Tiiny AI Inc. (www.tiiny.ai), a U.S. AI Infra startup, today announced that its Tiiny AI Pocket Lab surpassed US$1 million in Kickstarter pledges within five hours of its March 11 launch.
Tiiny AI Pocket Lab is a pocket-size personal AI supercomputer that plugs into a laptop or PC and turns it into a local AI terminal. Built as a dedicated backend for always-on AI, it is designed to support up to 120B-parameter models locally without requiring internet, cloud services, separate servers, or a high-end GPU. It also offers one-click deployment, 0 token fees, and an always-on operating profile within a 65W power envelope.
The milestone signals early demand for what Tiiny AI calls "AgentBox" — a new class of dedicated local devices designed to run always-on AI models and agent workflows privately and persistently, including OpenClaw-based agents. It also reflects a broader shift from cloud-based AI toward edge-cloud synergy, where routine agent tasks run locally for privacy, reliability, and greater cost control, while the cloud is used selectively when needed.
In the first five hours, the campaign reached US$1,009,664 in pledges from 728 backers. The backer base was led by the United States (about 70% of backers, by backer count), followed by Germany and Canada, with additional backers from the United Kingdom and Spain, as of 3:00 pm EDT on March 11.
"We are in a broader shift from cloud-based AI to edge-cloud synergy, with a new hardware layer emerging: agent-native devices built to run always-on workflows locally," said Samar Bhoj, GTM Director at Tiiny AI. "Our focus is to make that experience accessible with one-click deployment, local-first operation, 0 token fees, stronger privacy controls, and a practical edge-cloud synergy model that uses the cloud only when needed."
Pricing and Availability
- Kickstarter campaign page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiinyai/tiiny-ai-pocket-lab
- Kickstarter super early-bird price: US$1,399
- Website-only deposit program: Tiiny AI offers a US$9.90 deposit on its website to lock in a US$1,299 price (US$100 lower than the super early-bird price).
- Estimated delivery: August 2026 (final schedule and regional availability detailed on Kickstarter)
AgentBox: A New Category Built for Always-On AI Workflows
As AI adoption accelerates, cloud-based AI is encountering friction for many everyday workflows: recurring usage costs, privacy and data-sovereignty concerns, reliability risks from network or cloud outages, and long-context capabilities. At the same time, agent frameworks are pushing AI beyond chat and into multi-step workflows, such as organizing files, building local knowledge bases, generating reports, and executing tasks over time.
Against this backdrop, Tiiny AI sees the emergence of "AgentBox" — a new class of compact local AI devices designed to support always-on agent workflows. Tiiny AI Pocket Lab is built to support up to 120B-parameter models locally, while offering privacy, reliability, and greater control as a persistent local AI engine that works alongside users' existing devices.
This "AgentBox" is powered by Tiiny AI's proprietary optimization technologies, including TurboSparse and PowerInfer, designed to improve throughput and efficiency for local inference on compact hardware.
The company offers a ready-to-use open-source ecosystem. Tiiny AI Pocket Lab supports one-click installation of more than 50 leading open-source models including OpenAI GPT-OSS, Llama, Qwen, GLM, Mistral, and Phi, and enables seamless deployment of over 100 popular open-source AI agents such as OpenClaw, OpenCode, Flowise, Presenton, Libra, Bella, and SillyTavern. Users receive continuous updates, including official OTA hardware upgrades.
To further strengthen ecosystem openness, Tiiny AI said the product will also support user-imported .gguf models from Hugging Face beyond the officially adapted mainstream models. The company plans to launch a corresponding model conversion tool in July 2026. SOTA open-source LLMs will receive priority support from Tiiny AI, while longer-tail models can be converted and imported by users based on their own needs. This is intended to make the product not only a local AI device, but also a more controllable local AI runtime environment with greater transparency and user oversight.
Built for Local-First Security and Control
As AI agents become more capable and more autonomous, security concerns are expanding beyond the model itself into broader areas such as permission management, behavior auditing, and execution control.
In response, Tiiny AI emphasizes three design principles: local-first operation, least privilege, and human-in-the-loop control. The company says sensitive workflows should remain locally processed whenever possible; agent access to tools, files, and APIs should be limited to only what is necessary for a given task; and human confirmation or audit mechanisms should remain in place for actions involving sensitive data, external systems, or critical operations.
According to Tiiny AI, this is part of what distinguishes AgentBox from a generic local AI setup and cloud-based AI: it is meant to provide a more transparent and controllable environment for running AI continuously in everyday workflows.
In December 2025, Tiiny AI Pocket Lab was verified by Guinness World Records under the category "The Smallest MiniPC (100B LLM Locally)", recognizing its form factor and ability to run a 100B-parameter LLM locally.
Formed in 2024, the team brings together global engineers from MIT, Stanford, HKUST, SJTU, Intel, and Meta, with deep expertise in systems engineering, AI inference optimization, and hardware–software co-design. Their research has been published in premier academic conferences including SOSP, OSDI, ASPLOS, and EuroSys. In 2025, Tiiny AI secured a multi-million dollar seed round from leading global investors.
Headline specs (configuration dependent):
- Memory: 80GB LPDDR5X
- Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD
- Performance: ~18–40 tokens/second (config dependent)
- Power: 30W TDP (65W adapter required); designed within a 65W power envelope
- Dimensions/weight: 142 × 80 × 22 mm; 300g
- Compatibility: macOS & Windows
(Note: performance figures are configuration dependent; Tiiny AI can provide test conditions upon request.)
Press kit:
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About Tiiny AI Inc.
Tiiny AI Inc. is a U.S. AI Infra startup. The company's mission is to make advanced AI personal, private, and accessible, bringing powerful model and agent workflows to local devices with simplified deployment and predictable costs. With its founding team formed in 2024 by engineers from MIT, Stanford, HKUST, SJTU, Intel, and Meta, the company develops breakthrough technologies such as TurboSparse and PowerInfer that enable up-to-120B LLMs to run on pocket-sized consumer devices for the first time. Tiiny AI's mission is to make advanced AI accessible, private, and personal.
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AgentBox Emerges as Tiiny AI Pocket Lab Hits $1M in 5 Hours on Kickstarter, a Shift from Cloud AI to Edge-Cloud Synergy
