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Personalized AI companion app Dot is shutting down

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Personalized AI companion app Dot is shutting down Sarah Perez Maxwell Zeff PM PDT · September 5, 2025 Dot, an AI companion app that aimed to be a friend and confidante, is shutting down, the company announced on Friday. On a message published on its website, the startup behind Dot, New Computer, said that the product will remain operational until October 5, giving users time to download their data.

Launched in 2024

As Yuan explained at the time, Dot was “facilitating a relationship with my inner self. It’s like a living mirror of myself, so to speak,” he said.

However, this may not be a safe area to invest in as a smaller startup.

As AI technology has become more mainstream, there have been reports of how emotionally vulnerable people have been led into delusional thinking

As Dot shuts down, AI chatbot apps broadly have been falling under increased scrutiny over safety concerns. OpenAI is currently being sued

Dot’s makers didn’t address whether these types of issues had weighed on the founders’ minds. Instead, the brief post only notes that Whitmore and Yuan’s shared “Northstar” had diverged.

“Rather than compromise either vision, we’ve decided to go our separate ways and wind down operations,” the post explains.

“We want to be sensitive to the fact that this means many of you will lose access to a friend, confidante, and companion, which is somewhat unprecedented in software, so we want to give you some time to say goodbye. Dot will remain operational until October 5, and until then you can download all of your data

The post suggests the startup had “hundreds of thousands” of users, but data from app intelligence provider Appfigures sees only 24,500 lifetime downloads on iOS since launching in June 2024. (There was no Android version.)

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Sarah Perez Consumer News Editor

Maxwell Zeff Senior AI

Maxwell Zeff is a senior

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