Forget about feeds: Status AI raises $17M to turn social media into interactive entertainment

Like many young people her age, Fainur was what she calls a “chronically online teenager.” She was obsessed with music groups, TV shows, and movies, and never missed an opportunity to talk endlessly about her interests online. When ChatGPT launched in 2022, she immediately saw the potential. “AI will finally allow any user to actually simulate a character, allowing them to not only see and talk to their favorite worlds, but live in them,” she told TechCrunch.

“The role-playing and immersion that fans have always wanted is suddenly possible at scale,” she said. She brought in her friends Amit Bhatnagar and Pritesh Kadiwala, who had grown up making Minecraft games, and the three of them started building Status AI. This is a gamified social media app that allows users to play as any character from any world. The app officially came out of stealth last year.

According to Noor, to use the app, users first create a persona and are then transported to a social world built around them. “Users can become celebrities with millions of followers, immerse themselves in the world of their favorite shows and books, run for president, and become the talk of the internet,” Noor said.

The world of Status is user-generated, with the setting, story, and characters all emerging from player interactions. “Choose one character to be your first follower and earn more as the story progresses.” There are both multiplayer and single-player modes for users who want to connect with friends within the app. “We’re seeing interest from studios and streamers,” she said. “They see status as a way to develop an audience before getting fans into theaters and arenas.”

The company announced Tuesday that it has raised $17 million in seed and Series A funding, with investors including Abstract, General Catalyst, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator, and LightShed Partners. The hike is a bet that the next chapter in consumer social will not be another feed, but interactive entertainment and its accompanying IP franchise.

Noor argues that the days of passive entertainment, where users would sit and watch other people’s lives scroll through, are over. And the first generation of AI social apps built around chatbot experiences like Character.AI and Chai are already starting to feel outdated.

“Status is built on the assumption that the next generation doesn’t want to see the story,” she says. “They want to be a part of the story and even want to live inside the story.”

This change is attracting the attention of media companies. Rich Greenfield, partner at Lightshed and Status Investor, told TechCrunch that media companies these days are “desperately looking for ways to get consumers to live in the worlds and characters they create.”

In some ways, Null said, the company wants to reimagine what consumer apps look like in a post-AI world. “We use AI to create immersive and fun experiences that are brand-safe, interactive, and infinitely dynamic.” The status is also part of a trend TechCrunch reported late last year that suggests the future of social media will be less generalized and more focused on fandoms and niche communities.

Natalie Dillon, a consumer investor at Marvelon, argued that the winners of the new social media era will be “platforms that combine intimacy, practicality, and creativity into one ecosystem,” which will “feel less like a traditional social network and more like a multiplayer environment where people can build, buy, and belong all at once.”

Noor said the new funding will be used to expand the platform. She says Status has already created more than 13 million worlds and more than 5 million character profiles. This metric suggests strong early engagement in what Nur calls a new category: immersive social entertainment.

“Early users were primarily young women,” she said. “And it is consistently the audience who decides which platform becomes the culture.”

This article has been updated to add Union Square Ventures as an investor.