Shapes Wants to Put AI Characters in Your Group Chats, and Honestly? It Might Work

There’s a new app called Shapes trying to solve a problem I’ve felt but never articulated: group chats die because nobody wants to send the first message. Shapes’ solution? Throw in some AI characters that can kick things off and keep them going.

The company just came out of stealth with $8 million in seed funding from Lightspeed, AI Capital Partners, AI Grant, and some angels. Think Discord, but with AI bots that are treated like actual participants—labeled clearly as “Shapes” for transparency, but otherwise unrestricted. They can message whenever they want, react to stuff, even start new threads.

Founded in 2022 by Anushk Mittal and Noorie Dhingra, Shapes already has over 400,000 monthly active users. That’s not huge, but the growth curve is interesting: they claim a sixfold increase since the start of the year, driven entirely by word of mouth. Thousands of users apparently spend two to four hours per day inside the app. That’s serious engagement for a chat app, AI or not.

What caught my attention is how Mittal frames the value proposition. He told TechCrunch that all our current AI interactions are one-on-one, private, isolated—which isn’t how humans actually communicate. “Our lives run on group chats,” he said. “It’s just natural to bring in AI into those same conversations.”

I buy that more than I expected. The whole “AI companion” trend has always felt a bit lonely to me—just you and a bot in a room. Shapes flips that by making AI a social lubricant rather than a replacement for human interaction. The founders even claim this could help address “AI psychosis,” where prolonged one-on-one AI interactions lead to delusions or paranoia. By keeping AI in a group context, you’re constantly grounded by real people.

Users have already created three million custom Shapes with their own personalities. A lot of them are rooted in fandom—think deep dives on obscure anime or niche music scenes. When you sign up, the app asks your interests and suggests group chats. It’s clearly targeting the obsessively online crowd, not your average WhatsApp user.

One thing I appreciate: Shapes aren’t passive. Unlike ChatGPT‘s group chat feature, which is mostly for planning or brainstorming, Shapes characters have “free will”—they decide when to chime in. You don’t have to @mention them or summon them. They’re just there, like that one friend who always has something to say.

Is this necessary? Probably not for everyone. But the app isn’t trying to be universal. Mittal explicitly said it’s for people who are “obsessively online” and want to obsess about their interests with AI facilitators. That’s a specific niche, and sometimes niches work better than mass-market plays.

The $8 million will go toward development and user acquisition. I’m curious to see if this stays a niche fandom thing or breaks into broader social chat. Either way, it’s a more interesting take on AI social than yet another companion app.