Ukrainian software developer MacPaw has partnered with Liquid AI to power its products — including the forthcoming AI assistant Eney — with models that run locally on users' devices, the company announced on August 5, 2026. The partnership also covers MacPaw's subscription app store SetApp, which serves over 150,000 paying users and is being repositioned around AI applications with credit-based pricing.

Liquid AI, a company focused on building compute-efficient AI models designed to run on any device, will provide what is known as on-device inference — meaning the AI processes data on the user's own machine rather than sending it to a remote server. The collaboration includes a system called Elix and a local memory architecture, both developed by Liquid AI to run Eney's assistant features without an internet connection. MacPaw says on-device processing eliminates the need for Eney queries to reach the network, allowing the assistant to respond faster, according to a MacPaw newsroom post published in December 2025.

Liquid AI co-founder and CEO Ramin Hasani said the company selects a model architecture tailored to the target hardware before training its models, which allows for efficient on-device intelligence with privacy and security benefits. Hasani also said Liquid AI is building a customization stack around its models that lets them learn from user data and become more intelligent over time. The degree to which that personalization happens entirely on-device versus with some network component was not detailed.

MacPaw CEO Oleksandr Kosovan said locally hosted AI models will let users run assistants and automated workflows offline. Eney, which MacPaw calls a "Computerbeing" — an AI companion designed to think with you, act for you, and adapt to how you work — was unveiled in mid-2025. Since then, MacPaw has shown it as a Mac assistant controllable through natural voice interaction, one that identifies where work is happening and handles the connective, attention-surfacing parts of it. Eney and Liquid AI's technology are becoming more integrated across system care, cybersecurity, app discovery, and AI assistance, according to a MacPaw newsroom recap published in July 2026.

For MacPaw, the Liquid AI partnership extends beyond its own products. The company plans to make the local processing architecture available to third-party developers building for SetApp, enabling on-device AI in their applications. MacPaw's planned platform will also give developers access to cloud models from providers like Google, positioning SetApp as a single entry point for both local and cloud AI capabilities.

MacPaw is experimenting with credit-based pricing for SetApp's AI features. Under this model, users can perform a set number of AI operations based on credits, with cost tied to task complexity. The specifics of how credits map to particular operations were not disclosed. SetApp currently has over 150,000 paying subscribers, and MacPaw plans to focus more heavily on AI apps within the store.

The partnership arrives as the on-device AI landscape grows more crowded. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all invested in local model execution through their respective operating system integrations, and open-source frameworks like ONNX Runtime, Core ML, and llama.cpp have made it increasingly feasible for developers to run small AI models on everyday hardware. What sets MacPaw's approach apart is the combination of a curated app distribution channel — SetApp's subscription model — with a developer-facing inference platform that spans both local and cloud models.

For developers, the proposition is straightforward: a single programming interface for AI calls, with Liquid AI's Elix handling on-device work and cloud providers filling in for tasks that exceed local compute or context limits. Whether MacPaw can attract enough AI-focused developers to SetApp to make that platform meaningful is the open question. The store's existing user base of 150,000 paying subscribers is a credible starting point, but it is modest compared to the distribution of Apple's App Store or standalone AI tools that have reached tens of millions of users on their own.

MacPaw's broader product portfolio spans system utilities (CleanMyMac, CleanMyPhone), VPN software (ClearVPN), and cybersecurity through its Moonlock Engine division. Eney appears designed to serve as the connective layer across these products — an assistant that can coordinate system maintenance, surface security concerns, and handle general Mac productivity tasks. The Liquid AI partnership gives that vision a technical foundation: local inference for latency-sensitive and privacy-critical operations, with the option to escalate to cloud models when needed.

Liquid AI's involvement also signals continued momentum for the idea that purpose-built, architecture-selected models can outperform general-purpose models on consumer hardware. Hasani's claim that Liquid AI tailors its model architecture to specific hardware before training is a meaningful departure from the dominant approach of training large general models and then compressing them for deployment. If Elix delivers efficient inference on Mac hardware without unacceptable quality tradeoffs, it would validate that approach in a consumer-facing context.

MacPaw did not provide a specific launch date for the Eney local engine or the developer-facing inference platform. The company's newsroom landing page, as of this reporting, did not list a dated press release about the Liquid AI partnership among its visible headlines.