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More than 600 million people watched the moon landing live in 1969. When NASA\u2019s Artemis program returned astronauts to the lunar surface, an estimated 27 million tuned in, even as the world\u2019s population had doubled. The shared cultural experience, the kind that once stitched strangers together, has quietly collapsed\u2014and Paul Scherer thinks AI is about to make it worse before anyone tries to make it better.<\/p>\n
That gap is what Eigen is betting on. The stealth AI startup has raised a $15 million seed round from Benchmark with Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann and Dreamer founder David Singleton (who later sold his company to Meta) joining as angel investors, Fortune learned exclusively.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scherer, the company\u2019s 22-year-old founder, grew up in a village of fewer than 1,000 people outside Frankfurt, Germany. He left high school at 17, taught himself to code, and arrived in San Francisco in May 2025 on a one-way flight and an O-1 visa. Before that, he helped scale Augment\u2014a Paris-based alternative MBA for entrepreneurs\u2014from near-zero to over $1 million in monthly revenue.<\/p>\n
Benchmark partner Sarah Tavel had spent years hunting for the right company in the AI social space. \u201cI\u2019d long felt that one of the most important consumer opportunities in the AI era was going to be something that felt like a friend,\u201d she told Fortune. \u201cCompanies like Replika and Character.ai were the first to show the potential here, and although I met with several founders going after this opportunity, most felt like they created more loneliness, not less. Then I met Paul.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scherer isn\u2019t building another Replika. Product details remain deliberately vague, but he frames Eigen\u2019s thesis against the hyper-personalization logic that defines modern tech. \u201cEveryone is racing to build your AI best friend,\u201d he told Fortune. \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is asking: what would this world look like if it was perfect for all of us, not just each of us individually?\u201d The goal, he says, is to create shared, synchronous experiences that bind people together rather than atomize them. The team isn\u2019t ready to outline what exactly that technology looks like, and recognizes it\u2019s hard to imagine what it might resemble. But the market, Scherer says, is clear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Half of U.S. adults reported feeling isolated in the APA\u2019s 2025 Stress in America survey. Meanwhile, the global AI companion market\u2014valued at $37.12 billion in 2025\u2014is projected to reach $552.49 billion by 2035, according to Precedence Research.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Silbermann sees Eigen as a different kind of answer. \u201cPaul described an AI friend who enriches relationships with your real friends, not replaces them,\u201d he told Fortune. \u201cWhat I hope stays consistent is Eigen\u2019s passion for building products that are pro-social, genuinely helpful, and fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
To build it, Scherer is assembling what he calls a \u201cU-shaped\u201d team. Deeply experienced tech veterans will work alongside unusually young creative builders, skipping the conventional middle. Engineers think like product managers; the company has also hired a screenwriter. Nearly all its engineers, Scherer said, are former founders.<\/p>\n
Tavel was taken as much by the quality of Scherer\u2019s thinking as by the vision itself. \u201cThe elements of Paul\u2019s vision were completely contrarian and when I pushed him, deeply thought through,\u201d she told Fortune.<\/p>\n
The seed capital will go toward hiring\u2014specifically, Scherer says, building \u201cthe best team on earth.\u201d Whether that team will be able to create the synchronous, shared experiences Eigen pitches is the question the company is now funded to answer.<\/p>\n
#Exclusive #Eigen #raises #seed #Benchmark #build #worlds #mutual #friend<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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