As AI becomes increasingly integrated into people’s daily lives, it is changing not only the way we work and improve productivity, but potentially also how we interact with one another.
Twoo is developed and operated by being being private limited, a Shanghai-based team that has long focused on the intersection of AI and emotional value. The company aims to extend AI beyond its traditional roles as a productivity tool or personal companion and into interactions between people.
Recently, TechNode had the opportunity to interview Twoo founder Cobe Chen, discussing the product’s philosophy, the role of AI in social relationships, its monetization strategy, and plans for overseas expansion.
Unlike conventional AI companion and AI friend products, Twoo is built around the idea that every two people can share an AI. Rather than serving one individual, the AI becomes a third member of the relationship, participating in conversations, remembering shared experiences, and facilitating interactions between the two users.
From AI companionship to supporting human relationships
Twoo’s initial exploration began with AI companionship. The team experimented with helping people build friendships with AI, but later realized that AI could also play a role in interactions between people, according to Chen.
Many conflicts in real-life relationships are not caused by a lack of care, but by a lack of understanding. “People often fail to fully express what they mean. They may have ten things in mind but communicate only two or three, so the other person has to interpret the limited information and may draw the wrong conclusions,” Chen said.
Twoo aims to use AI to reduce this communication gap. When two people encounter a question during a conversation, they do not need to leave the chat and turn to another AI product for an answer. Twoo’s AI can participate directly based on the shared context between the two users, while identifying their common interests, goals, and experiences.
Twoo does not want AI to become the center of the conversation. Instead, it is designed to serve as an organizer and facilitator within the relationship. It helps the two people understand each other better.
From remembering to understanding and taking action
Shared memory is one of Twoo’s key product capabilities. The team describes the AI’s approach to understanding a relationship in three stages: remembering, understanding, and taking action.
First, conversations within the shared space become part of the context that the AI can continuously access. But simply remembering what users have said is not enough. The AI also needs to gradually understand their personalities, interests, and relationship based on fragmented information accumulated over time, Chen noted.
Beyond understanding, Twoo wants AI to help turn conversations into action. Features such as a shared notebook and reminders allow users to turn plans discussed in chats into real-world activities, whether that means deciding to do something together over the weekend or setting a shared learning goal.
The team believes that relationships may begin with communication, but ultimately need to be sustained through action. For this reason, the value of AI is not simply to help two people talk more, but to help them accomplish more together.
From couples to friends and activity partners
Twoo initially focused on close relationships such as couples and best friends. But as users have found new ways to use the product, it has expanded to include family members, ordinary friends, activity partners, and even strangers.
Much of this expansion has been driven by users themselves, according to Chen. The team has observed users looking for Twoo partners on Chinese social platform Xiaohongshu and inviting strangers to use the app together, in a way that resembles the early days of the internet when people exchanged QQ numbers to make new friends.
Currently, Twoo does not define its core users primarily by age or relationship type. It focuses on whether people are willing to make AI part of their social relationships.
The team has also found that some users feel the same friend can behave differently on WeChat and Twoo. Within Twoo, the person may become more playful, which can lead to more relaxed and entertaining interactions between the two users.
In the team’s view, Twoo creates an experience somewhere between a private chat and a group chat. It offers more interaction and spontaneity than a one-to-one conversation, while potentially providing a greater sense of privacy and security than bringing another real person into the conversation.
Exploring business models around emotional value and professional functions
Chen said that Twoo is currently exploring two main monetization paths. The first is monetizing emotional value. Twoo features a small octopus as its AI character, and users can purchase “shells” (in-app tokens) to unlock different outfits. The team believes this type of spending is essentially driven by users’ affection for the AI character.
The second path comes from professional use cases. Some users are already using Twoo for collaborative writing, while teachers have used it to support students with study plans, reminders, and learning records. In the future, these users could access more advanced features through premium memberships, including stronger file-processing capabilities and larger storage capacity.
Next stop: North America, Japan, and South Korea
Beyond China, Twoo is also preparing for international expansion, with North America as well as Japan and South Korea among its key target markets.
Chen said the challenges people face in communication, mutual understanding, and maintaining relationships are universal. Meanwhile, the growing adoption of AI worldwide provides a foundation for this type of product.
For Twoo, the bigger question is not simply whether AI can become someone’s friend, but what role it should play between people as AI becomes increasingly ubiquitous.
Twoo’s vision is not to replace human relationships with AI, but to give AI a new role within them. As a third member between two people, AI can help them better understand each other, strengthen their connection, and create more meaningful interactions together.
