{"id":65176,"date":"2025-08-12T23:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T23:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/65176\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T23:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T23:46:10","slug":"ai-companion-apps-on-track-to-pull-in-120m-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/65176\/","title":{"rendered":"AI companion apps on track to pull in $120M in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Demand for AI \u201ccompanion\u201d applications outside of bigger names, like ChatGPT and Grok, is growing. Of the 337 active and revenue-generating AI companion apps available worldwide, 128 were released in 2025 so far, according to new data provided to TechCrunch by app intelligence firm Appfigures<\/a>. This subsection of the AI market on mobile has now generated $82 million during the first half of the year and is on track to pull in over $120 million by year-end, the firm\u2019s analysis indicates.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Appfigures<\/p>\n

Unlike general-purpose chatbots, AI companion apps anthropomorphize AI interactions by allowing users to converse with custom characters, including friends, lovers, girlfriends or boyfriends, fantasy characters, and more. Appfigures defined the market segment in the same way, describing companion apps as those in which the user can interact with either premade or user-generated synthetic characters meant to embody an actual personality.<\/p>\n

Popular apps in this space include Replika, Character.AI, PolyBuzz, Chai, and others. <\/p>\n

As of July 2025, AI companion apps across the Apple App Store and Google Play have been downloaded 220 million times globally. During the first half of 2025, downloads were up 88% year-over-year, reaching 60 million. <\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Appfigures<\/p>\n

Appfigures crunched the numbers and found that, as of July 2025, AI companion apps have driven $221 million in consumer spending worldwide. So far this year, these apps have generated 64% more revenue than during the same period in 2024. <\/p>\n

The top 10% of all AI companion apps generate 89% of the revenue in the category, the data shows. In addition, around 10% (or 33) of the apps have exceeded $1 million in lifetime consumer spending. <\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Appfigures<\/p>\n

Revenue per download is also up $0.66, from $0.52 in 2024 to $1.18 for the category so far in 2025.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

While dedicated AI companion apps are fairly popular, bigger companies like xAI are also moving into the market. In July, xAI\u2019s Grok launched AI companions, <\/a>including an anime girl and guy<\/a>, as well as a snarky 3D fox.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, ChatGPT\u2019s recent upgrade to GPT-5<\/a> brought to light the fact that many of its users felt a kinship with the older model, as they mourned<\/a> the loss of their AI companion, whom they had come to depend upon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To address these and other concerns about GPT-5\u2019s performance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman brought back the 4o model<\/a> for the time being.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Appfigures<\/p>\n

Google last year tapped into the market, too, when it hired away Character.ai\u2019s founder, Noam Shazeer<\/a>. The Character.ai app lives on and still has tens of millions<\/a> of monthly active users.<\/p>\n

According to Appfigures\u2019 data, the most popular AI companion apps are those used by people looking for an AI girlfriend. Of the active apps on the market today, 17% have an app name that includes the word \u201cgirlfriend,\u201d compared with 4% that say \u201cboyfriend\u201d or \u201cfantasy.\u201d Terms like anime, soulmate, and lover, among others, are less frequently mentioned.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Appfigures<\/p>\n

The firm notes there were likely a number of other AI companion apps that launched on the app stores since 2022, but were later removed after failing to gain traction in terms of revenue or downloads. Those weren\u2019t factored into its analysis, however.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re always looking to evolve, and by providing some insight into your perspective and feedback into TechCrunch and our coverage and events, you can help us! Fill out\u00a0this survey<\/a>\u00a0to let us know how we\u2019re doing and get the chance to win a prize in return!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Demand for AI \u201ccompanion\u201d applications outside of bigger names, like ChatGPT and Grok, is growing. Of the 337…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,41656,276,277,49,48,2140,1682,61],"class_list":["post-65176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-companion","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chatgpt","tag-grok","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}