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JOURNEY · DETAIL
Mujian Founder Roi: Building a Super Playground for Introverts in the AI Era, from Emotional Value Tools to AI-Native Social Products
Founded: Roi · Mujian (Beijing Mujian Technology Co., Ltd.)
JOURNEY
Key Fields
FIELD STAMPSIndustryContent / Creator Economy
RegionChina
ScaleMid-size
ChannelOther
Origin
In a conversation on the Tencent podcast 'Crossing,' Roi noted that she had long observed the social needs of Gen Z, discovering that many 'introverts' felt exhausted by traditional social apps and craved low-pressure, shared-experience interaction scenarios. After the rise of large models in late 2022, she realized that AI could serve as a 'buffer' to regulate social pressure. She decided to launch a startup focused on AI social products centered on shared experiences, rather than looks or instant matching. Thus, Mujian was born, aiming not to replicate chatbots, but to build a playground for the AI era.
Milestones
2023
Founding Turning Point
Roi left Tencent to officially found Mujian. She admitted on the podcast that in 2023, when the AI social track was just heating up, the team had only 5 people. The first version of the product was positioned as 'AI + interest activity matching,' but user retention was extremely low, with fewer than 5,000 monthly active users. This failed cold start made her realize that treating AI merely as a matching tool wouldn't work; the product had to be designed around emotional experiences.
2023
Product Pivot Inflection Point
The team abandoned the matching model and pivoted to 'shared experience'-driven AI social scenarios, launching the first beta version, 'Mujian Theater.' Users could participate in script-based interactions with AI characters, with each session lasting about 20 minutes. During the beta, 1,000 seed users were invited, and day-two retention reached 38%, far exceeding the industry average of 12%. This validated the 'experiential social' direction, and the team decided to go all-in on social entertainment.
2024
Financing PMF
Mujian completed a Pre-A round of financing worth tens of millions of RMB, led by a top-tier USD fund. According to founder Roi in a Tencent News interview, the product had surpassed 300,000 monthly active users at the time, with a conversion rate of about 4.5%, primarily driven by virtual items and AI character subscriptions. However, she admitted that user growth relied mainly on word-of-mouth, and customer acquisition costs on iOS were as high as 80 RMB per person, creating significant pressure.
2025
Expansion Growth
The product launched an 'AI Director Mode,' allowing users to customize plot branches and perform in real-time with AI characters, with UGC content accounting for 35% of the total. In June of the same year, Mujian reached as high as 17th on the Apple App Store social chart, with cumulative registered users exceeding 4 million and peak daily active users reaching 550,000. The team expanded to 60 people, but content moderation and computing costs rose in tandem, with monthly operating costs exceeding 3 million RMB.
2025
Setback Failure
The team attempted to replicate the product for overseas markets, launching an English version called 'StagePlay' targeting Western Gen Z. However, due to insufficient localization and cultural context differences, it only reached 20,000 downloads in three months with retention as low as 8%. The project was scrapped in December 2025. Roi reflected on the podcast that the Chinese-style 'shared experience' narrative lacked resonance in the West, and the team lacked sufficient understanding of overseas social products, resulting in a loss of approximately 5 million RMB in R&D costs.
2026
New Direction Turning Point
Based on domestic user feedback, Mujian pivoted to a 'super playground' positioning, integrating AI characters, mini-games, and real-time voice chat, with plans to launch multi-player online interactive scenarios within 2026. According to 36Kr, the team is beta-testing 'AI Theme Party Rooms,' where a single room can accommodate 12 people interacting with AI characters simultaneously. Test users' average session duration reached 68 minutes, a 210% increase compared to the previous version.
Turning Points
- Pivoting from AI matching to shared-experience-driven interactive theater was the only way to secure initial retention data.
- Shutting down the overseas version, StagePlay, and retreating to the domestic market to avoid further losses.
- Rebooting as a 'super playground' in 2026, integrating AI characters with mini-games to increase session duration.
- Abandoning private community operation models in favor of acquiring organic traffic through app store free charts.
Failures & Pitfalls
- The 2023 initial AI interest-matching product had extremely low retention (under 5,000 MAU), which the team internally identified as a strategic error.
- The overseas version, StagePlay, launched in late 2025, saw only 20,000 downloads in three months with 8% retention, resulting in a direct loss of 5 million RMB in R&D budget.
- An attempt to hire celebrity voice actors for AI characters was terminated midway due to excessive costs (over 200,000 RMB per character).
关键成功要素
- Using shared experiences rather than physical appearance as a social hook to avoid the 'Momo trap'.
- AI characters serve as both narrative drivers and atmosphere builders, reducing social pressure for users.
- UGC plot editors allow ordinary users to create scripts, driving organic content growth.
- Adhering to a 'domestic-first' strategy and retreating quickly after the failure of overseas exploration to preserve cash flow.
Lessons
- Failure is not necessarily a bad thing; the low retention in 2023 led to a clear understanding of user needs.
- There are no shortcuts to overseas expansion; localization is not just translation, but the recreation of cultural context.
- The moat for AI social products lies in experience design, not model parameters.
- A customer acquisition cost of 80 RMB per user is unsustainable; growth must rely on organic acquisition and user referrals.
Core Data
- Cumulative Registered Users：4 million (First half of 2025) (Public data, independent verification not performed)
- Peak Daily Active Users：550,000 (June 2025) (Public data, independent verification not performed)
- Conversion Rate：4.5% (Q2 2024) (Public data, independent verification not performed)
- Day-Two Retention：38% (2023 beta period) (Public data, independent verification not performed)
- iOS Customer Acquisition Cost per User：80 RMB (Public data, independent verification not performed)
- Pre-A Round Funding：Tens of millions of RMB (Public data, independent verification not performed)
- Overseas StagePlay 3-Month Downloads：20,000 (Public data, independent verification not performed)
- Monthly Operating Costs：Over 3 million RMB (2025) (Public data, independent verification not performed)
Competitors / Peers
In the AI emotional companionship sector, Mujian faces direct competition from Replika, Xingye (under MiniMax), and Zhumengdao. Replika has accumulated over 10 million users thanks to its first-mover advantage in Western markets and subscription model, while Xingye leverages its large model capabilities to focus on immersive role-playing, with a reported DAU exceeding one million. In contrast, Mujian has chosen a differentiated positioning—avoiding one-on-one chat in favor of multi-player AI theater experiences, attempting to counter the technical dominance of major tech firms with a UGC narrative ecosystem. However, this also means its growth ceiling is limited by content production speed and scenario reuse rates.
Sources