Tolan AI companion app passes 100,000 paying subscribers, tops $10M run rate

August 24, 2026 · finance.biggo.com

Tolan's most popular subscription tier costs $25 a month, and with more than 100,000 paying subscribers the AI companion app now runs at a rate above $10 million a year, founder Ajay Mehta said on the My First Million podcast. The company's core paying audience is women aged 35 to 45 across the Midwest, many of them moms who found the app through cooking demos. Mehta called the split a surprise: he set out to build an AI companion and Midwestern moms showed up. Each user names and customizes a character called a Tolan, Mehta's own is named Swami, and the app talks back by voice: more than 70% of messages on Tolan are voice, compared with roughly 90 to 95% text on ChatGPT.

Growth here came from authentic product demos, like cooking-help videos, showing real use cases. That approach reached an audience traditional tech marketing overlooks: Reddit users crochet dolls of their Tolan characters and describe the app as a best friend. Media plans built on demographic assumptions about who adopts AI products early can miss real spending power outside typical tech hubs. A case like this shows how quickly a niche, accidentally discovered audience can scale into a business with a run rate above $10 million.