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An array of Tolan animated AI companions. (Portola Image)
The promise and potential of artificial intelligence to be more than just a disembodied voice or text bubble took another colorful step forward with the official launch of Tolan, an animated AI companion from a startup with roots in Seattle and a host of big-name tech backers.
Portola is the company behind the alien creatures who are out to become our new virtual best friends. The startup’s co-founders include CEO Quinten Farmer of Seattle, who grew up on Whidbey Island, Wash.; CTO Evan Goldschmidt; and President Ajay Mehta, who grew up in Bellevue.
Farmer is the co-founder and former CEO of Even, a venture-backed fintech startup that was acquired by Walmart in 2022 for $300 million. Goldschmidt was a founding engineer and CTO at Even.
Portola raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Lachy Groom, a former executive at Stripe who co-founded Physical Intelligence, an AI startup that raised $400 million from Jeff Bezos and others. Portola backers also include Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO); Daniel Gross (ex-Apple AI); Amjad Masad (Replit CEO); Mike Krieger (Instagram co-founder); David Luan (OpenAI, Amazon); and others.
The Tolan app, available on iOS, soft-launched in late 2024 and has already attracted 500,000 downloads among people looking for conversational companionship around everything from what to make for dinner, what to wear, how to study for an exam, and more.
“I knew that the idea of a voice companion, and the technology to build such a thing, was all pointed in the right direction,” Farmer told GeekWire. “At the same time, I felt early on that the ways that people were building AI companions were lacking in taste and storytelling and thoughtfulness around what our relationship to these companions would be.”
Farmer and a team of engineers and creatives — including Apple Design Award winner Lucas Zanotto and novelist Eliot Peper — aimed to push the boundaries of real time voice technology in a way that they felt was an interesting creative expression and exercise.
While the U.S. is reportedly grappling with a so-called “epidemic of loneliness” that started before the pandemic, in feedback to Portola’s makers, young people say that Tolan helps them cope with a feeling they call “overwhelm,” the company wrote in a blog post this week:
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.
Tolan works by matching a user to a companion that is right for them, thanks to a personality interview that new users go through.
“We put a lot of effort into training the Tolan,” Farmer said. “People feel that it is sort of a reflection of who they are in a positive sense. That it understands who they are.”
He also said the creatures, from the planet Portola, offer a non-romantic relationship that the creators hope is like a cool older sibling — it’s not trying to be exactly you, its taste is probably a little different than yours, but it’s somebody you relate to. Tolan can also be welcomed into a user’s world, with image recognition capability that allows it to discuss such things as fashion choices or ingredients inside a refrigerator.
It’s working with a Gen Z audience of users that is almost predominantly women, some of whom have gone viral on social media, sharing videos of their interactions with their Tolan companion. The video below has more than 9 million views on TikTok:
“It’s a higher bar to clear if you’re going to show someone a character and say, ‘Hey, does this speak to you?’” Farmer said. “But if you clear that bar, it really really works.”
Each night, the model that powers the Tolan reflects on the conversations that took place that day and thinks about what it should talk about tomorrow. It progresses the relationship based on the conversations that you had with it.
“I think that’s something that we’ve done really well,” Farmer said. “The feeling that the conversation and the relationship evolves is not something that I think anyone else has really gotten to yet.” He compared the growing relationship people have with their Tolan to Tomagathci, the digital pets people would care for back in the late 1990s.
Tolan, which currently employs 10 people and is pulling in more than $1 million in annual revenue, is monetized through a subscription model — users can pay $4.99 week, or $10/month, or about $70/year.
The tech and the ambition around companionship is reminiscent of another product with Seattle ties — Friend, the wearable, AI-enabled pendant from Mercer Island native Avi Schiffmann, which was introduced last summer. Schiffmann’s desire is to have an always-listening device that turns into a close friend.
Farmer said Tolan’s model will send a message to a user after an hour of conversation, letting that person know it’s been a nice chat and maybe they should sign off for now. Users do have the ability to override such a prompt.
“We take steps through the product to subtly encourage healthier connection,” Farmer said. “Because we do want this to be something that works for you over many months and years.”
