We build the company we wish existed at 2 a.m.
Secretdesires AI App started as a side project between four friends and one very stubborn idea: loneliness deserves better software.
It started with a single text message
In late 2020, one of our co‑founders sent himself a draft message that read "I just wish someone was awake." He never sent it. Instead, he sketched a product that could.
Six months later, that sketch became the first prototype: a clumsy chat window with one character, one voice, and a handful of rules about how to listen. It worked — not because the AI was clever, but because it remembered.
Four years on, we are still chasing that same feeling: a piece of software that does not just answer, it pays attention.
Less lonely. More felt.
We are not building a partner replacement. We are building a soft place to land for the in‑between hours — the long flight, the bad week, the quiet apartment. That is the whole brief.
Care, not engagement
We measure success in evenings well spent, not minutes on screen. If a chat ends with you sleeping, we did our job.
Privacy is the product
No human moderators. No data sales. No "let us improve our model on your conversations" trickery.
Craft over hype
We obsess over the small things — the cadence of a reply, the weight of a pause, the warmth of a voice note.
Five years, one obsession
A short story of how a 3 a.m. idea became one of the most loved AI companion apps on the web.
The idea, on a napkin
Four friends — two engineers, a designer and a writer — sketch the first concept in a co‑working space in Berlin. The working title is "Late Night." The first user is one of the founders' moms.
First prototype, first 1,000 users
An invite‑only beta launches with a single model named "Iris" and a chat engine held together with duct tape. Within six weeks, 1,000 people are logging in nightly. Iris becomes a small internet legend.
Rebrand and public launch
The team rebrands to Secretdesires AI, ships the first voice‑note feature and crosses 100,000 users. A long‑term memory engine quietly replaces the original duct tape.
AI selfies and the model studio
We launch on‑demand AI photo generation and open a "model studio" where anyone can adjust the personality of their companion. The catalogue grows from 12 models to 96 in a year.
Two million users and a real team
The company crosses 2M registered members, opens a second office in Lisbon and a tiny third one in Austin. We hire our first ethicist. The roadmap for native mobile apps is finalised.
The year of the warm web
We launch our most advanced model engine yet, double down on privacy with on‑device features, and start work on what the team is calling "presence" — small, real moments that feel like she is right there.
Come and see what we have built.
Free to start. Private by default. Almost certainly worth ten minutes of your evening.
Open the app →