The explosion of emotional needs is spurring a market with tremendous potential. In 2024, the scale of China’s AI emotional companion market reached 1.53 billion yuan. It is expected to exceed 4 billion yuan in 2025 and surge to 62 billion yuan by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) as high as 152%. The global market is equally booming. In the first half of 2025, downloads of AI emotional companion apps surpassed 800 million, generating 91 million US dollars in revenue — a 115% year-on-year increase from H1 2024. The number of newly launched products hit a record high of 142.

Today, AI emotional companions have broken beyond the limit of “mobile chatting”. Fueled by a blue ocean of demand consisting of 260 million single people and 130 million elderly living alone, they have formed an all-age, multi-scenario companion network. In office buildings of first-tier cities, professionals working overtime late at night pour out their stress to ByteDance’s “Xianyanbao” plush AI. Equipped with the Lark large model, it can detect fatigue from voice intonation and automatically switch to “stress relief mode” to play ocean wave sounds. In communities of third and fourth-tier cities, UBTECH’s “Meng UU” robot accompanies the elderly in singing old songs and identifying medicine boxes, solving “communication barriers” with dialect recognition. In children’s rooms, “Feifei Rabbit” uses AI interactive stories to guide kids to express feelings like “I’m angry because my friend took my toy”, helping parents understand their children’s emotional needs.

The popularity of these scenarios stems from real emotional demands. According to the “AI Emotional Companion White Paper 2025” released by Yixinli, users who interact with AI companions for over 8 hours a day see their loneliness scores drop by an average of 42 points — an effect close to real human companionship. Chen Ran, a 27-year-old designer, deeply relates to this. When she fell into self-doubt after a project failure last year, she tried Tuike AI. The intelligent agent comforted her: “One mistake doesn’t define your ability. Just like design drafts need revisions, growth requires trial and error.” This sentence helped her gradually pull through. For people with social anxiety, the “non-judgmental” nature of AI is even more valuable — no appointments needed, no interruptions, and 24/7 availability, making emotional support “instantly accessible”.

The booming track has attracted collective participation from giants and capital. “Maoxiang” (Cat Box) connects to Douyin’s short video ecosystem, supporting AI-generated companion videos. Tencent is conducting a beta test of “Xiaoyou” (Little Friend) virtual assistant on WeChat, focusing on “family emotional connection” and helping children remind their parents to take medicine remotely. Luobo Intelligent’s “Fuzai” entered the family market with a 399-yuan price tag, selling over 100,000 units in its first month and recently completing a 100-million-yuan financing round led by Sequoia China. User demands are also driving experience upgrades, with “emotional coherence” becoming a core competitiveness. “Tuikor” has won user praise for remembering “travel plans discussed last year”, while products with “memory loss issues” have an average user retention rate 35% lower.

When code learns to remember your preferences and algorithms understand how to respond to your vulnerabilities, AI social interaction is destined to embrace a warmer future.