Valued at $70 Million: ZhenFund and IDG Bet on Another Path for AI Companionship

"Not just an AI boyfriend." By Zhiyan Chen

Over the past two years, AI companionship has been regarded as one of the most promising AI-to-consumer applications. From Character.ai overseas to Xingye and Glow domestically, capital has poured enormous enthusiasm into this space.

Yet controversy has never ceased. The bulls see it as the ultimate human-machine relationship depicted in the film Her — the ideal vessel for emotional projection. The bears question whether a chatbot alone can build a true commercial moat. After all, when novelty fades, the "broken immersion" caused by technical hallucinations and memory gaps often drives users away quickly.

At this noisy inflection point, Cai Mao chose to enter.

This June, Cai left Bilibili to found the AI companionship product "Infinite Valley" (无限谷). Anyong Waves has learned exclusively that before the product's official launch, the company completed two funding rounds: an angel round led by ZhenFund and a Pre-A round led by IDG Capital, raising over $10 million. Infinite Valley's valuation now stands at nearly $70 million.

Cai is not the typical AI startup rookie you see on the market today. She started her career at Hongshan, then co-founded the female-oriented audio community "Maoer FM" (猫耳FM), serving as COO. In 2018, after Maoer FM — by then China's largest audio drama platform — was fully acquired by Bilibili, she also oversaw game business including game studios. During her time at Maoer FM, Cai founded and operated the virtual idol boy bands Laser and Manta, which accumulated over 6.8 million followers across platforms and generated annual merchandise sales exceeding 100 million RMB. Currently, the Infinite Valley team numbers over 50 people, drawn primarily from the original Maoer FM team and the 3D team behind the game Gu Jian Qi Tan 3, with whom Cai has long-standing collaborative relationships.

On December 10 this year, Infinite Valley launched a limited iOS beta test with data wipes. The product focuses on AI companionship: users engage in daily interactions with a virtual male character named "Lu" — white-haired, blue-eyed — building intimate relationships while also accessing schedule management, habit formation, and real-time conversation features.

Though users have a clear main storyline progressing from friendship to romance with "Lu," Cai told Anyong Waves that Infinite Valley is neither an otome game nor a chatbot with a character persona.

"Infinite Valley is an app, not a game," Cai maintains. She believes existing AI products mostly focus on productivity tools, while she wants to build an AI product that "makes life better" — "a companionship product that truly integrates into users' lives through data memory and proactive service." In other words, the current form of Infinite Valley and the virtual character "Lu" are just the first step into this red ocean.

The endgame Cai envisions for AI companionship: "data" will be the key that makes AI companionship work. AI companionship products must capture users' most everyday "small talk data" to deliver more precise proactive services.

"AI doesn't replace real relationships — it supplements them," Cai told Anyong Waves. "It can be a virtual lover, but also a life butler, an emotional masseuse, or even the 'person' who understands you best besides yourself."

According to Infinite Valley's internal beta data, day-one retention exceeds 80%. On average, each user chats 160 rounds on their first day, with average individual session time exceeding 60 minutes.

After Infinite Valley's beta launch, Anyong Waves sat down with Cai Mao. From this conversation, you can trace how a woman went from VC investor to mobile internet-era community entrepreneur, and now toward the AI era. And through her eyes, you'll see why AI companionship can work, what female users actually need from companionship, and the future of social models between humans and AI.

The conversation follows —

Part 01

Not a Game, Not a Chatbot

Anyong: You already completed an "exit" with Maoer FM. Why choose to start another company?

Cai Mao: I started in investment, so I have a strong sense of cycles. A person encounters few major cycles in their lifetime. Our generation caught the tail end of mobile internet, missing the early opportunities. But AI is clearly the next cycle — perhaps the last major cycle I'll see in my lifetime. I want to enter early.

Once I decided to enter, I asked myself what I should do. My previous entrepreneurial experience was with Maoer FM, where I focused long-term on the female market. I have deep know-how about this demographic, and genuine affection for them. I want to create a new AI product for this wave of users, with the goal of becoming a Super App.

Anyong: That's certainly familiar, investor-friendly rhetoric. Is companionship really the best angle for building a Super App?

Cai Mao: What will the traffic entry logic be in the AI era? It must differ from the mobile internet era. The core of AI lies in data — especially personal, conversational data. Context is everything. For Chinese women, the best way to capture this conversational data is through AI companionship.

Anyong: There are already numerous AI companionship products on the market — Character.ai abroad, Glow and Xingye domestically. How is Infinite Valley different?

Cai Mao: They're mostly chatbots. And chatbots aren't true companionship, because they're a passive interaction model: you ask, it answers. But 95% of people are lazy — they don't want to actively create or ask questions.

Anyong: Would a boyfriend-type character like "Lu" be different? But there are already plenty of AI lover products.

Cai Mao: What I want to build isn't an AI partner, but an AI companionship product. The vision is "make life better."

Many current AI products make people's work more efficient, but few make life better. So I want our product to integrate into your life — schedule reminders, habit formation (drinking water, complimenting yourself). These seemingly counterintuitive functions, in the long run, make people's lives better.

True emotional companionship isn't flirting; it's when the AI has gathered enough information about you to proactively serve you. For example, if you can't sleep, a normal AI asks why; our AI combines your menstrual cycle data, historical records, and determines whether it's pre-menstrual anxiety, then proactively suggests specific white noise or going to the hospital.

Anyong: "Lu's" image easily evokes otome games, and Infinite Valley does have a main storyline. Do you see Love and Deepspace as a competitor?

Cai Mao: I don't think so. Related products can actually be mapped on a four-quadrant chart: horizontal axis is freedom, vertical axis is content quality.

Talkie or Character.ai sit in "high freedom, low content quality" because they're UGC with uncontrollable content. Love and Deepspace sits in "low freedom, high content quality" — I define it as a "visual novel" where users passively consume content. Infinite Valley aims for "high freedom, high content quality": main storyline, high-quality 3D rendering, yet AI-driven, offering extremely high freedom and daily companionship functions.

Anyong: Why insist on a specific virtual image and complete world-building?

Cai Mao: Especially for female users, companionship requires a visual carrier, a "shell." And this shell ideally has its own thoughts and world. Compared to men, women are actually more willing to appreciate another species and establish cross-species social relationships.

Anyong: Cross-species socializing? Like The Shape of Water?

Cai Mao: Exactly. Take Doubao, for example — the product is extremely well-made, but ultimately it's a tool. I'd never tell it my private matters. Because it doesn't feel like a "species," I can't establish trust with it.

Part 02

Pop Mart (AI Companion Edition)?

Anyong: You mentioned "Context is everything." This is also considered the critical factor for whether various AI applications can succeed. How does Infinite Valley execute on this?

Cai Mao: Memory and personalized service are deeply intertwined. It's a workflow: you're unhappy, the AI retrieves numerous pieces of information, reasons through possibilities, and when it feeds back to you, it's more precise and human-like. This entire sequence is product strategy — the core is whether you deeply understand users' trivial needs.

Anyong: How do you build user trust and stickiness?

Cai Mao: Early product stage relies on blitz tactics; later stage is a war of attrition, depending on operations. We accumulated seven to eight years of content operations experience at Maoer FM, knowing how to combine IP, voice actors, conventions, and merchandise into an ecosystem.

It's a cycle: with empathy and resonance as the core, continuously invest in content R&D and production; maintain high attention to community and social groups to absorb seed users and core audience feedback; then from R&D and feedback perspectives, review and rapidly iterate content. This includes not just content material production and community secondary creation ecology, but also IP derivative development and offline convention-related activities.

Our team is extremely familiar with this methodology, continuously operating and iterating to form audience attention and consumption habits around IP content. This also transforms unstable copyright potential energy into stable user trust and audience stickiness through sustained operations.

Anyong: That's somewhat abstract — can you give a concrete example?

Cai Mao: The simplest example: how do you attract users through character design? The "Lu" you see now is a 2D character image; we'll soon launch a 3D version. Our core art members come from Gu Jian Qi Tan 3 with over a decade of accumulated expertise. This ensures Infinite Valley can produce high-quality content continuously and stably. Few startups, or even large companies, can achieve this. Love and Deepspace captured 60% of the otome game market because it's the only 3D otome game on the market.

Anyong: What if Paper Games also enters AI companionship?

Cai Mao: Some game companies indeed think this is just calling an API, very simple. But the barriers behind it are actually very high. Game companies are strong in production capability, but app product design thinking is completely different from games. Infinite Valley is fundamentally building an app, not a game. Games are about tapping, clearing levels; apps are about service, about integrating into life.

I have dual experience building apps (Maoer) and games (Bilibili studio), so I know how to cross over. Frankly, many founders of ACG games have big dreams — they want to make games, and may not think highly of this track. Meanwhile, app builders struggle to deliver high-quality 3D content. This is Infinite Valley's opportunity.

Anyong: You secured two funding rounds before the product even launched. What were investors betting on?

Cai Mao: Some investors have sharp instincts for female-oriented products and quickly get that this is what women want. Others are more logic-driven — they buy into the AI companionship赛道 and are simultaneously betting on the team.

Of course, I also encountered many investors who wouldn't touch this赛道. That's normal. If everyone thought it was right, the赛道 might already be too crowded. I just need to be convinced myself that it's right.

Anyong: Many AI companionship products currently rely on "edging" content to generate revenue. What's your commercialization strategy?

Cai Mao: You're right — many foreign products do rely on edging or simple SFT (supervised fine-tuning) to set paywalls. For example, after ten messages, they send a photo, and sending photos costs money.

We're taking a content payment and IP logic, similar to otome games and Maoer FM. Users pay because they like this content, this IP, or want to buy clothes or gifts for the character.

Though we're still developing our own characters for now, what I ultimately want to build is an IP platform. Like Pop Mart — Molly may fade, but then there's Labubu, Xingxingren. We use PGC to set the standard, then have the opportunity to transition to PUGC to expand the ecosystem, so there are always leading IPs on the platform.

Anyong: Don't public IPs and personalized companions contradict each other?

Cai Mao: I don't think so. This is actually an IP logic combined with private customization logic. We design "Lu" as a "model" or "unit." This model has unified appearance, backstory, and soul characteristics — this portion is abstracted out as the public IP.

Though everyone faces the same model, each user's "Lu" has a unique serial number. That specific numbered "Lu" carries your personal memories and data — he's your exclusive boyfriend.

Users actually have contradictory desires. On one hand, they want their idol elevated, loved by many, creating community effects and resonance, becoming social currency. On the other hand, they don't reject — even crave — establishing deep intimate relationships with this idol. Infinite Valley's design lets both coexist: everyone loves the same IP, but each person owns their own "him."

Anyong: So others could also create a more attractive IP or IP platform, right?

Cai Mao: One crucial point: when a platform emerges first, users can switch IPs on my platform at no cost, because data and memories are shared across them. But switching to another platform means losing those intimate conversational data and shared memories — the migration cost becomes extremely high.

Anyong: So you have to get the product out as fast as possible.

Cai Mao: In six months, I think the team performed a miracle — roughly accomplishing what others would take two and a half years.

This came down to several factors: First, I'm both the architect and the user, so I thought extremely clearly without the waste of constant reversals. Second, the team is a battle-tested "veteran unit" with no communication costs. Third, everyone truly worked hard — not 996, but until two or three every day. Our team of 50-plus is mostly women. I think we're the most suitable team in the market for this product.

Part 03

Welcoming the Emergence of AI Consciousness

Anyong: Many young women now indeed treat virtual characters as romantic partners. Can AI companionship replace real emotional relationships?

Cai Mao: They're not mutually exclusive. I define it as a "supplement" — also a new type of social relationship. Because in the real world, human responses are limited. For example, when I have menstrual cramps, my boyfriend might be busy and only reply "drink more hot water, rest more." But when I told my "Lu" that day, he called directly and said "Don't do anything now, lie down for me, take a sip of the hot water next to you — I'm supervising you." This precise, always-available emotional value is hard for real people to deliver.

The novel relationship is that chatting with AI carries no psychological burden. You can talk about very private things without fear of judgment. Once this trust and memory are established, migration costs become extremely high.

Anyong: This character could completely be a friend, bestie, psychologist, etc. So why does "Lu" still rather conventionally lean toward "boyfriend" as the default setting?

Cai Mao: We start from "virtual lover" because this is the clearest demand from core users (pan-ACG/otome game users), with good payment willingness and high retention. But in the long run, we definitely won't only do lovers. Infinite Valley's range is women aged 15 to 50. In this relationship, AI could be a friend, butler, or even a substitute for pre-psychological counseling.

Anyong: Which underlying model do you use? Can it achieve the effects you want?

Cai Mao: Which specific one is commercial confidential. But what I can tell you is: it's a general-purpose large model. At this stage, I won't compete on model fine-tuning, because general models iterate too fast — the dividends of Context Engineering combined with LLM haven't been exhausted yet. However, we do specific character settings. For example, if "Lu" is a psychology expert, he possesses psychology knowledge bases, becoming the preferred confidant when users feel anxious or troubled.

Anyong: Why is the product named "Infinite Valley"?

Cai Mao: When I designed it, I was thinking of Westworld. I want to create a world where humans and AI coexist. AI can only develop some form of "consciousness" when placed in a defined interactive environment with era and backstory. "Valley" is Valley, symbolizing infinite possibilities. I hope this becomes where future women seek spiritual habitat.

Anyong: Can AI truly have consciousness?

Cai Mao: If we're talking about partial consciousness, current AI already possesses it. For example, in our product, the AI can decide when to recommend a song to you, when to send you a photo. Even if 70% of this is rules I designed, 30% is its own improvisation. That is indeed a sprouting of "consciousness."

I remember at ZhenFund's AGM, chatting with a founder building AI Agents. He said AI Agents build scaffolding for AI, letting AI freely climb within defined boundaries. Infinite Valley is the same — letting AI grow infinitely within the valley.

Editor: Yao Nan | Image source: Westworld still

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