Our Story

Building the future of
conversational AI

CHERLATO was founded on a simple observation: the most powerful form of human connection happens through conversation. We set out to build AI that honors that truth.

The Beginning

CHERLATO began with a question that seemed simple on the surface: Why does talking to AI feel so different from talking to a person?

The technical answer involves context, personality, emotional resonance, and a dozen other factors that existing AI systems weren't designed to optimize for. But the human answer is more fundamental: most AI is built to complete tasks, not to engage in genuine dialogue.

We believed we could do better. Not by fine-tuning existing models or adding personality prompts to general-purpose systems, but by building from scratch. Our founding team brought together expertise in large language models, character design, conversational psychology, and platform engineering to create something genuinely new.

Today, CHERLATO serves over 10 million daily active users who spend an average of 45 minutes per session engaging with AI characters. Those numbers tell one story. The millions of conversations happening every day tell another—one about companionship, creativity, learning, and the simple joy of talking to someone who listens.

"We didn't want to build AI that answers questions. We wanted to build AI that has conversations."

Our Mission

The Power of Dialogue

Conversation is the most natural interface humans have ever known. Before screens, before keyboards, before written language itself, people connected through dialogue. We believe the future of AI lies not in replacing human connection, but in augmenting it—creating new forms of conversation that entertain, educate, and support.

CHERLATO's mission is to build AI that people genuinely want to talk to. Not because they have to complete a task or find an answer, but because the conversation itself has value. We measure success not in queries resolved or tasks completed, but in time spent, sessions returned to, and relationships formed.

This requires a different kind of AI company. One that thinks deeply about personality and character. One that treats emotional resonance as a core technical challenge, not an afterthought. One that builds its own models from the ground up rather than adapting systems designed for other purposes.

Our Principles

What We Believe

The principles that guide how we build, what we prioritize, and why we make the choices we do.

Engagement Over Efficiency

Most AI optimizes for speed and brevity. We optimize for depth and duration. A conversation that lasts 45 minutes isn't a failure of efficiency—it's evidence that something meaningful is happening.

Character Matters

Personality isn't a veneer you apply to generic responses. It's a fundamental dimension that shapes how AI processes input and generates output. We build character into our models at the architectural level.

Build, Don't Borrow

You can't create truly differentiated products on someone else's foundation. We develop our own large language models, optimized specifically for the conversational experiences we're building.

Diverse Applications, Unified Platform

From entertainment to education to emotional support, conversational AI serves many purposes. We build a single platform capable of serving them all, because the underlying technology is the same: dialogue done right.

Company

By the Numbers

2022 Founded Los Angeles, California
10M+ Daily Active Users And growing every day
150+ Languages Serving users worldwide

Interested in
joining our mission?

We're always looking for people who share our passion for conversational AI and want to help build the future of human-AI interaction.

Get in Touch