AI companion startup Nature Select tops $100M after Series A extension
What's the deal? Chinese AI companion startup Nature Select has closed a Series A extension, pushing its total funding past $100 million. New backers include 5Y Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Source Code Rhythm, Matrix Partners China, and Welight CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
What's the endgame? Founded in 2024 by Zhang Xiaofan, Nature Select builds AI companion products using its own dialogue model, Vibe, and memory model, Echo. Its flagship app, EVE, is a 3D companion that lets users chat and video-call fixed virtual characters.
Why now? The company is also building Elys, an invitation-only social network where users create AI avatars that post, browse, and interact on their behalf. Elys drew attention around early 2026 with its "let your clone meet people" feature and peaked at 100,000 daily active users.
Nature Select is betting on personal agents — a crowded field. Elys is being revamped to foreground agents that learn from users' chats and activity, then recommend people, content, and services. The idea: build relationships first, so the agent gradually accumulates knowledge of a user's interests and connections.
What could go wrong? Both of its target markets are packed. In companionship, ByteDance runs Maoxiang and MiniMaxDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has Xingye and TalkieDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. In personal agents, the biggest rivals are big platforms that already hold user data from social, work, and shopping products — an edge startups lack.
Regulation is another risk. Appfigures data shows Zeta, by Korea's Scatter LabDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, led romance AI companion revenue at about $33 million in the first half of 2026; it was flagged by Korea's National Assembly in October over youth addiction. Runner-up Tipsy Chat, at about $15.2 million, was pulled from the US App Store the same month.
The signal: The round shows investors still back AI companionship and personal agents, even after Nature Select raised over $30 million early in 2026 with Alibaba and Ant among backers. But funding alone won't settle it — the open question is whether these products can hold users and turn concepts into sustainable revenue.
Read more: itjuzi.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
