Born

AI friends aren’t therapists. They should be fun and social. The biggest misconception about Born is that we make people more lonely. This is default wrong and we proved it with Pengu -- a social AI character you raise with your real life friends. Millions of users build better real life relationships while being entertained through a cute IP. We will launch more characters within Pengu soon. We will push everyone’s imagination of how to engage and be entertained by AI friends, beyond the chatbot. 👉 More at born.com

We believe your next favorite human...isn’t. Today we’re Born: announcing a $15M Series A to reimagine AI friends. I always dreamt of building the future of consumer technology. My co-founders Jannis, Stefan, and I were broke, hungry, and trying to build cool stuff. On a random Sunday in 2022 we decided to build a clone of Nikita Bier’s tbh. It went viral in Europe and hit No. 1 in the App Store. On the same day, Nikita announced Gas App hitting No. 1 in the US. We maxed out personal credit cards to pay AWS bills, not knowing where this would lead. A week later, we raised our first round. I’m grateful to Accel for backing us in every round, and to Luca Bocchio and Julien Bek for their early belief. Harry Stebbings and 20VC played a key role in every round. In 2023 we built frfr, the first AI social app that hit escape velocity, with hundreds of thousands joining daily. Fast forward, five of our apps hit No. 1 in the App Store across the globe. We were 6 people, obsessed with building a retentive product after all those viral hits. I got excited about AI characters, but joy and trust were missing in the space. We shipped Pengu, an IP-based AI character for the mass market. Fun, social, and built to go beyond the chatbot. From the start, D30 was best in class. Accel doubled down, and we became laser focused on AI friends. We’re in the middle of a paradigm shift: consumers are embracing AI at scale. But ChatGPT can’t be the end state. Josh Miller said it best: “The only way to unseat ChatGPT in the consumer market is to beat OpenAI at social.” That’s what we’re building. Born benefited from that momentum, growing DAUs rapidly and reaching millions in revenue. It was time for the next phase. I flew to the Bay Area to close our Series A in less than two weeks. Ilkka Paananen, an investor and mentor, introduced me to Tencent. From my first chat with Chloe Xia and Sunny Lo I knew they were the right partners. No one understands consumer technology better. Right after visiting their Palo Alto office, we signed the term sheet. Fun fact: we even share the same mascot. Excellent team members joined, many of them former founders. Today we’re serving 15M users and have raised $25M in total. Soon, we will launch new AI characters in Pengu, with more use cases and content. We’re also building new products at Born to reimagine what AI friends can be. It’s always the next thing. I want Born to be my life’s work. Dedicated to the people building in consumer. I had a lot of fun shooting this video with Mason O'Hanlon. The crazy part is this man didn’t even flinch when I asked him to hop on a plane from NYC to film it. You're one of a kind. I’m happy to have an outstanding group of people on this journey. Excited for the next phase with Tencent, Accel, Laton Ventures, Luca Bocchio, Harry Stebbings, Ilkka Paananen, and so many others.