Y Combinator-backed company raises $6.7M to build breakthrough AI foundation model and releases whitepaper detailing innovative approach to AI behavior modeling

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, CA / ACCESS Newswire / October 16, 2025 / ego AI, a pioneer in AI-driven character technology, today announced the launch of character.world, a character engine built on the company's novel AI foundation model that mixes small language models with reinforcement learning to create human-like character behavior in games. In addition, ego is introducing its Character Context Protocol (CCP), an open source framework that enables AI characters to maintain persistent personalities, memories and relationships as they move seamlessly between games, apps, Discord servers, streaming platforms, and other digital environments. Together, these two solutions are setting a new standard for believable, persistent AI characters in game play.

"Games and digital worlds have always struggled with flat, scripted non-player characters (NPCs) that feel mechanical and forgettable. ego AI is tackling that head-on with characters who act, react and remember like real players," said Vishnu Hari, CEO and founder of ego. "Our mission is to move beyond chat windows and give people living, persistent characters who can make games richer, worlds more alive and interactions more meaningful."

To accelerate development, ego has raised $6.7 million in early seed funding from top institutional investors including Patron, Y Combinator, Accel, Boost VC, and prominent angels such as Balaji Srinivasan (former Coinbase CTO), Logan Kilpatrick (DeepMind), Arjun Sethi (Tribe Capital), Immad Akhund (Mercury), Siqi Chen (Runway), and technical staff from OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Anthropic. The funding is being used to train ego's foundation model and scale its research and engineering teams.

"What excites me about Ego is their approach to one of gaming's biggest challenges: creating characters that truly feel alive," said Adam Draper, founder and partner at Boost VC. "Their foundation model is a breakthrough in AI character behavior. We're entering a new era where AI characters will carry personality, memory, and emotion-indistinguishable from human players-and Ego is positioned to lead it. And Vish is the most resilient founder in the space."

ego also released Behavior is All You Need, a comprehensive technical whitepaper that details the company's approach to creating believable AI characters through four key components: personality, needs, emotion and memory. Unlike traditional chatbots designed for helpfulness, ego's characters exhibit autonomous behavior, emotional reactivity and the ability to form lasting relationships with players.

ego aims to democratize character development and enable broad industry adoption by releasing CCP as an open-source standard. The protocol defines lightweight interfaces for perception, action and memory that allow developers to integrate persistent characters into existing games and applications with minimal setup. Early implementations of CCP are supporting characters in Unity, Unreal Engine, Roblox and various Discord applications, with plans to expand to additional platforms based on developer interest.

The company has already seen significant market traction, with its Roblox experience attracting over one million users in its first month, and its Discord AI-character game rolling out in partnership with MEE6, one of the platform's most popular bots.

"Discord communities thrive on engagement and social interaction, but maintaining that energy 24/7 has always been challenging," said Brian Cho, partner at Patron. "ego's persistent AI characters bring communities to life even when human members aren't online. These characters remember conversations, develop relationships with community members and contribute meaningfully to ongoing discussions. It's transforming how we think about community management and engagement."

To support the computational demands of training and serving human-like AI characters, ego has partnered with the Singapore government through AI Singapore, along with collaborations with the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University.

"Singapore is committed to advancing AI that delivers meaningful impact across industries," said Dr. Leslie Teo, Senior Director of AI Products at AI Singapore. "ego's character engine for human-like behavior marks a pioneering step in social and interactive AI. We look forward to our research collaboration with ego, including providing infrastructure support for training the behaviour foundation model, to accelerate innovation and create opportunities for both our local talent and the global AI and gaming ecosystem."

Developers can access the CCP specification immediately, with SDK access available through a developer waitlist. The company is also launching "Accomplice," an AI-powered social deduction game playable on Discord with a Steam release planned.

About ego AI

Founded in 2023, ego AI is building the next generation of AI-powered characters: persistent, believable, and cross-platform. With a team of engineers from Meta AI, Riot and Square and researchers from MIT, CMU, UPenn and the University of Toronto, ego's vision is to power the future of games, social platforms, and digital experiences with human-like characters. Backed by Y Combinator, leading investors and supported by partnerships with the Singapore Government, ego is headquartered in San Francisco with additional research operations in Singapore and Tokyo. For more information, visit www.egoai.com.

ego Media Contact:
ego@songuepr.com

SOURCE: ego AI