Startup Shapes Raises $24 Million to Let You Chat With AI Friends in Groups

Shapes, Inc. has raised $24 million to build a group chat app where you can talk with both real people and AI characters at the same time. Founded by Anushk and Noorie, the startup wants to let you create custom AI friends — think pets, celebrities, or anime characters — and have them join conversations in your group chats.

How It Works

Shapes' core idea is simple: instead of talking to an AI one-on-one, like you might with ChatGPT, you invite your AI character to join group conversations with your friends. You design what your AI friend is like, how it should respond, and what it looks like, then it participates in ongoing group chats just like another person would.

This is different from most AI chatbots today, which only talk to one person at a time. Shapes puts AI characters directly into the chat thread alongside humans.

Why This Matters

The company believes people want AI that helps with socializing, not replaces it. Imagine a gaming group with an AI character that remembers inside jokes, or a work team brainstorming with an AI that suggests ideas when people get stuck. These are the kinds of uses Shapes is targeting.

Investors are betting this idea could work because AI has gotten smart enough to remember who it's talking to and hold a consistent personality over long conversations.

The Technical Challenge

Building AI that works in group chats is tricky. The AI needs to follow conversations between multiple people without getting confused, stay in character over time, and know when to jump in versus when to stay quiet. It also needs to respond quickly — people expect AI to reply almost as fast as another person would.

Creating highly personalized AI characters, the way Shapes describes, means the company probably needs to use advanced programming techniques to fine-tune how its AI thinks and behaves. The system has to keep each character consistent while also adapting to different groups and situations.

Where This Fits In

This is part of a larger shift in how AI is being used. For years, AI assistants have worked alone with one person. Now companies are starting to explore how AI could fit into existing social spaces — groups, teams, communities. It's a bit like when social media first started experimenting with automatic posts mixed in with human ones.

Having covered technology for three decades, I have watched similar moments before. When platforms add new features, the ones that succeed are those that enhance what people already do rather than forcing them to change how they communicate. Whether Shapes pulls that off remains to be seen.

Making Money

Shapes hasn't said exactly how it will make money yet. Companies like this often charge people for premium AI characters, fancier customization options, or bigger group sizes. Another possibility is a marketplace where users could sell AI personality designs they create.

One advantage of the group chat approach is that people are more likely to keep using it long-term — social connections keep people coming back. But managing thousands of AI characters behaving well in all kinds of different groups is a real challenge.

What Comes Next

The $24 million gives Shapes money to hire more engineers and improve its platform before more people try it out. The key question is whether AI characters can actually make group conversations better without feeling weird or fake. If the AI talks too much or acts strangely, people will just stop using it.

Looking further ahead, this could go beyond gaming and entertainment. As more people work from home, a tool that helps teams brainstorm or organize information using AI might be useful in professional settings.

For now, Shapes is testing out one answer to a question many AI companies are wrestling with: how do you fit artificial intelligence into the groups and communities people already care about. The funding gives them time to find out if people actually want AI friends in their group chats. That will depend on real users, using it day to day.