The Islamabad based AI startup is testing "Romulus" as spotted by some users on the Kik messaging platform. The arrival of "Romulus" comes ten months after Microsoft released a millennial-minded chatbot called "Tay" but removed it within 24 hours after the bot expressed racist and inappropriate leanings to some users. Those testing "Romulus" notice a more secure chatbot, and one that doesn't like talking about certain subjects like politics, for example. The chatbot learns from human interactions to respond emotionally and intelligently, offering a viewpoint, in addition to manners and emotional expressions. Till now, Romulus has been found very good at normal conversations.

In 2008, Krishna Gupta '09 launched Romulus Capital, a venture capital seed firm, out of his MIT dorm room, scraping together $850,000 to invest in tech startups launched by his classmates. Today, Romulus controls $150 million in funds and other assets, having just raised a new fund of $75 million in June. Now Romulus plans to fund 20 new startups, adding to its existing portfolio of 30 startups, many of which are MIT spinouts. That's not bad for someone completely unfamiliar with the venture capital industry when he launched Romulus as an MIT junior studying materials science and management. "I knew nothing about venture capital, nothing of investing," Gupta says.