MidReal

MidReal is an AI interactive story-creation platform founded in late 2023 by Kaijie Chen (陈锴杰), a Duke University graduate and serial entrepreneur born in 1997 . The platform lets users input a prompt—anything from a single sentence to a hundred sentences—and AI expands it into a story, with two modes: a tool mode for content generation and an interactive mode where the AI writes line by line like a screenwriter . Users can revise any sentence to redirect the plot, or branch off from others' stories to create alternate narratives . The product drew early technical inspiration from FireAct, a paper on extending AI's capacity for longer-form story generation and reasoning .

Chen's path to MidReal followed two earlier pivots: first, a smart-home robotics startup he launched after dropping out of college, then a GPT-2-powered open-world game demo that predated GPT-3.5's release . With MidReal, he aimed to build what he described as "a place to write stories"—not limited to any single format, but encompassing fiction, short drama, even Netflix-style video—where people who couldn't previously express themselves could create and share their best work . The user base skews young, primarily 20–35 years old in English-language markets, with themes leaning toward web-novel-style personal fantasies .

The company was among the first batch of AI application investments by Bolt, 线性资本's early-stage program, which backed MidReal in the first half of 2024 alongside Final Round, 心光, Cathoven, and Xbuddy . By mid-2025, MidReal had reached 3 million users and 300,000 monthly actives, though Chen had already begun pivoting toward his next project, Macaron (macaron.im), a "personal agent" built under the Mindverse umbrella .