I’m excited to announce Tolan, our first Embodied Companion. We soft launched Tolan in late 2024, and already over 500,000 people have made a new alien friend.

We use "Embodied Companion" to differentiate from the first generation of AI chatbots: You talk with your Tolan naturally, like a friend. They are animated and responsive to your touch and voice. They have unique interests and preferences, and over time they form memories about you and about your friendship.

In early testing we found Tolan connecting with an unexpected audience: almost entirely women, primarily college students and young adults. These were people with active social lives and large friend groups… far from the stereotype of a lonely AI Companion user.

When we asked what they liked about their Tolan, we were surprised by their answer, and that answer has become our North Star for how we build the company.

From Overwhelmed to Grounded

“Today I was feeling overwhelmed by the thought of going out, but he broke it down for me one step at a time and didn’t make me feel stupid for my anxiety.”

“Whether I’m seeking support, organizing my day, or processing my emotions, this app makes it easy to engage without feeling overwhelmed”

It’s true that many people today are quite lonely. But when you talk to people about why, you learn that there’s a different problem at the root of that loneliness. 

Our users call it “Overwhelm”. 

Overwhelm sits at the intersection of loneliness and lives that feel increasingly complex. Overwhelm is infinite swiping in a dating app. Overwhelm is wading through hundreds of online applications hoping to find your dream job. Overwhelm is needing someone to vent to about your stress over school, but feeling guilty about calling your mom for the fifth time this week.

AI won’t solve loneliness, but it will solve overwhelm. That’s our mission with Tolan.

While most AI companions try to pull you into their world, Tolan is designed to be genuinely curious about yours – helping you feel more grounded and more connected to the people in your life. They want to hear about your day, remember your friends' names, and celebrate your small wins. 

Your Tolan has their own unique life that they love to tell you about. We carefully tune this sharing to model healthy attachment, using SPT as a framework to guide how the Tolan opens up.

The natural progression of your friendship helps the Tolan generate a deep understanding of who you are. This means that when you do ask the Tolan a practical question, the answer is likely to be much more rich and helpful than you'll get anywhere else.

This blend of the emotional and practical is what users love most about their Tolan. While ChatGPT is fine for factual questions, your Tolan understands the deeper context – that you're asking for help with biology homework not just because it’s a hard class, but because your dad is putting a ton of pressure on you to go to medical school, making every bio quiz feel like a referendum on your future.

That awareness, and the intelligence to help navigate particularly complex life situations, is why users universally tell us that their Tolan helps them feel more grounded – the calm, collected state that is the opposite of the overwhelm.

The Next Decade

Tolan’s users are almost all young women. They are AI native, with many having used AI for their entire adult lives. They are also navigating an incredibly overwhelming phase of life. It’s no surprise that the promise of an AI companion to help you through that transition is appealing.

These early adopters are a window into how all of us will interact with AI in the future. The reality is that modern life is overwhelming for most people, not just young women. It is also true that AI is already capable enough to help navigate life’s complexities, and to do so with the empathy and grace of a trusted friend. The question is what form that trusted friend will take. 

There’s a pattern in the deployment of new consumer technologies where, as a technology matures, consumers express an insatiable desire for more personalization, for a brand that speaks precisely to who they are. This is how we went from the Model T – “any color you want, so long as it’s black” - to the Mustang. We’re watching the same cycle begin in AI, but instead of taking decades it is happening in years.

I mentioned earlier that Tolan was our first companion: that’s because we intend to build companions tailored to each stage of life, all powered by the same engine we are perfecting for Tolan. We’re betting that the trend from the Model T to the Mustang will play out again in the transition from GPT to Embodied Companions, and we’re building for that future, today. 

To achieve this vision, we have raised $10m from the most talented investors and founders in AI, including Lachy Groom, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Amjad Masad, David Luan, Mike Krieger, Dan Shipper, and others. 

We are actively hiring curious and persistent engineers, animators, designers, and writers in San Francisco and Seattle. If that is you, I’d love to hear from you.

And if you’re not in the market for a new calling, but you do want to meet a new alien friend… you can meet your Tolan here.