Ukraine-based app developer MacPaw has partnered with Liquid AI to power its products with locally hosted AI models, and eventually make the tech stack available to developers. The company is also preparing its SetApp app store for AI apps with credit-based plans for users.

MacPaw’s CEO Oleksandr Kosovan said locally hosted AI models will give users the ability to run assistants and agentic workflows offline. Apple already offers local models, but Liquid AI’s focus is on performance for different capabilities. “Before training our models, we select an architecture that is different and tailored to the hardware,” said Ramin Hasani, co-founder and CEO of Liquid AI.

The partnership also aims to make on-device inference available to developers through MacPaw's platform, which will provide access to other cloud models from companies like Google. MacPaw plans to focus more on AI apps for its subscription-based app store, SetApp, which has over 150,000 paying users.

Once it locks in the local processing architecture with Liquid AI, MacPaw wants to make the tech available to developers so they can use on-device inference with their apps. Kosovan said the platform will also provide access to other cloud models from companies like Google, acting as a one-stop shop for developers.

MacPaw is already experimenting with credit-based pricing for the app store, where users can perform a certain number of AI operations based on the credits they have and the complexity of the task. Eney, MacPaw's AI assistant, will now be built with an on-device inference system called Elix.