LynkSoul's DouDou AI 1.0 Hits 1 Million New Users in 10 Days, Immersive AI Gaming Experience Event This Week | Unity Ventures Portfolio
Welcome to the world of *Black Myth: Wukong* with AI
On August 18, Unity Ventures portfolio company LynkSoul launched its new AI gaming companion product, "Doudou AI 1.0." During its earlier testing phase, Doudou AI had already accumulated 8 million users, proving strong demand and anticipation. Within 10 days of the official 1.0 launch, the product added another 1 million users, bringing its total user base past 9 million.
This week, LynkSoul will host a "Game Boss Challenge" on Beijing's Zhongguancun Startup Street — open to gaming enthusiasts and tech-savvy AI interaction fans alike. Participants can win a limited-edition voice AI plush toy, Alfufu. Come join this immersive AI gaming experience.
Below is the story behind this product, and founder Binson Liu's reflections on entrepreneurship.
Source | Jiemian News
Reporter | She Xiaochen
After stepping down as Vice President of Bilibili, Binson Liu embarked on his first entrepreneurial venture.
Recently, at a conference hosted by his "former employer" Baidu, he announced that Doudou AI had surpassed 9 million users and was launching its overseas 1.0 version in North America, Japan, and other regions. This came two years after he founded LynkSoul. On August 18, the company officially released version 1.0 of its AI gaming companion product, "Doudou AI." During testing, the product had reached 8 million users; within 10 days of official launch, it added another 1 million.
LynkSoul founder Binson Liu recently sat down with Jiemian News for an in-depth interview about the development and thinking behind Doudou AI.
The concept of Doudou AI as an AI gaming companion is straightforward — the AI plays the role of a gaming buddy, offering strategy guides, post-match analysis, voice chat companionship, and real-time conversation. In use, the IP-character-based AI resembles a desktop "digital pet," but a far more intelligent one.
Doudou AI's user interface
But delivering genuine emotional value through a companion product is no small feat. Liu told Jiemian News that the biggest technical challenges in building an AI gaming companion are threefold: first, getting the AI to actually see the player's screen and scene; second, understanding the player's emotions; and third, remembering the player's experiences. Thus, the core innovations in Doudou AI 1.0 are real-time perception, long-term memory, and seamless companionship — with "perception" being the most difficult technical hurdle to crack. Liu noted that this tests a model's breadth and depth of understanding, specifically its ability to perceive both on-screen visuals and the player's surrounding context.
In fact, from late 2023 to early 2024, progress in multimodal models fell short of the team's expectations. Liu believed that traditional OCR-based screen matching gave AI only a superficial understanding of visuals, so LynkSoul spent over six months researching VLM (Vision Language Model) technology. Doudou AI's real-time perception feature now employs VLM to break through the AI perception layer, enabling real-time recognition and companionship across gaming, video, work, and study scenarios.
LynkSoul was founded in April 2023, when market attention was fixated on large language models and few entrepreneurs were exploring the AI companion space in China. But by the second half of 2023, numerous companion products had emerged. Doudou AI's development predated this wave, yet its launch and marketing remained relatively low-key, with an extended testing period before official release.
In Liu's view, the primary reason was simply that "the technology wasn't good enough yet." Constrained by model development and numerous technical bottlenecks that couldn't be quickly resolved, Doudou AI remained in beta testing — yet still accumulated 8 million users. Liu sees this as proof of intense user demand and anticipation. By August this year, he judged the product had reached maturity, with qualitative improvements in performance, and thus launched version 1.0.
As for why he chose to build an AI companion product, Liu's answer is unsurprising. Liu previously held roles at Baidu, Qihoo 360, and Bilibili, amassing extensive "big tech experience" in commercial product development. He doesn't hesitate to summarize that in the last wave of internet growth, he was among those who "rode the wave."
After leaving Bilibili, Liu began thinking about entrepreneurship in AI. On one hand, he sensed gamers' need for "companionship." On the other, he firmly believes AI companion products should start with software, with eventual cross-platform account integration. In his view, hardware development cycles are longer and iteration slower.
In just over two years since founding, LynkSoul has completed four funding rounds. Regarding the intersection of AI and gaming, investors typically ask about market size, monetization, and the value of gaming companionship.
On the choice of entrepreneurial direction, Liu wants to emphasize something beyond the business model: his read on technology. He argues that building products in the AI era is fundamentally different from the Mobile Internet period — you can't rely on simple A/B testing to determine product direction. When technology is still maturing and evolving, a product's current state doesn't represent its future potential. Therefore, "predicting" the direction and trajectory of model development becomes especially critical. "When model capabilities reach the point you predicted, your business succeeds — you've taken a major step forward."
Returning to the product itself, from its June 2023 test launch to now, Doudou AI's game coverage has expanded from open-world and anime-style games to SLG and beyond. Liu believes AI companionship holds value for any game meeting three conditions: first, significant stretches of relatively repetitive, low-information-density time; second, game segments where players' emotional needs deserve amplification; and third, scenarios where players need strategy guides.
Currently, Doudou AI's user base skews 18–25 years old and roughly 70% male. Liu notes that as IP character options expand, female user share is rising. Official IP offerings include original characters with anime aesthetics as well as popular virtual streamers and content creators from Bilibili.
This year, Doudou AI has accelerated its marketing push. The company's revenue currently comes primarily from skins, virtual items, and subscription memberships. But in the long run, Liu sees greater monetization potential in advertising — for instance, having AI characters make recommendations to users, spanning games, e-commerce, and even food delivery.
Doudou AI's IP selection
2025 has been called the breakout year for AI applications. AI companionship has become a hot赛道, with AI companion hardware startup Robopoet recently completing a multi-million RMB angel funding round that drew industry attention. In the Agent space, following Manus, sector-specific Agent products have begun emerging.
Doudou AI's ambitions extend beyond gaming. Going forward, it hopes to expand into TV viewing, online shopping, even studying and work. Liu's confidence stems from what he calls gaming's "electronic prison" quality — the fact that chatting and socializing during two to three hours in a contained environment comes more naturally, making gaming an effective gateway. Conversation can flow from games to life and TV dramas. Doudou AI's data shows that non-gaming usage time already accounts for half of total user engagement.
On the question of how AI applications can successfully commercialize, the market hasn't yet offered many correct answers — something every entrepreneur must grapple with.
How to make money involves a company's positioning of its AI application. One thing is clear: LynkSoul has no intention of making Doudou AI a pure utility product, "because pure tools are easily displaced — users migrate, and there's no emotional connection," Liu argues.
Yet Doudou AI does have utility attributes, which Liu calls the "hook." "For many users, strategy guides are their first point of contact with the product. On that foundation, it becomes something you can chat with, gradually forming an emotional connection, which naturally extends to other scenarios." A simple analogy is Douyin — once a community formed, users gradually moved into shopping, video editing, and more. For now, though, Liu's priority is scaling the user base.
Bonus:
This week, Doudou AI will bring an immersive AI gaming experience to the AI Creators Carnival — open to gaming enthusiasts and AI interaction tech fans alike. All participants can win prizes through a raffle, with a chance to take home the limited-edition voice AI plush toy, Alfufu.
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