AI Matchmaker: Startup Raises $4M to Discover Your Good Accomplice

Keeper, an AI matchmaking startup, thinks it could actually assist ship your “soulmate” to you. And if it could actually’t, it will let you already know.

“We’re saying we really know who could possibly be your soulmate or not,” Jake Kozloski, Keeper’s CEO, instructed Enterprise Insider. “We’re not going to waste your time and fake {that a} hundred thousand of those individuals could possibly be. We’ll inform you no.”

Based in 2022, the relationship platform makes use of layers of algorithms and AI fashions to match individuals who join its service. The startup is now disclosing for the primary time, completely to Enterprise Insider, that it raised a $4 million pre-seed funding in October 2024, led by Lightbank and Lakehouse Ventures. Goodwater Capital and Champion Hill Ventures participated within the spherical, amongst others.

Buyers “see AI as an inflection level within the relationship app panorama” and a chance to “disrupt the incumbents,” Kozloski mentioned.

Keeper is not the one startup making an attempt to shake up the web relationship market. Different AI matchmaking apps, equivalent to Sitch and Amata, have raised thousands and thousands to construct next-generation relationship apps. Relationship app incumbents like Tinder and Bumble are additionally making performs with AI-powered experiences.

Kozloski mentioned the corporate’s values had been one other piece of its pitch that attracted some traders.

“They really feel like there is a marriage disaster adjoining to the entire Elon Musk fertility disaster stuff that he talks about,” mentioned Kozloski, who described Keeper as being “pleasant with the pronatalist motion.”

Wanting children, although, is not a requirement to make use of Keeper, Kozloski added.

Since launching, Keeper has had greater than 1.5 million sign-ups, and about 300,000 of these have made accounts, Kozloski mentioned. Amongst that pool, there have been a “small quantity” of matches. Keeper did not share precisely what number of matches it is made, however based on its pitch deck, 10% of dates from its beta model resulted in marriage. With its funding, Keeper has been constructing out its matchmaking know-how over the previous yr.

Keeper is proscribed to heterosexual {couples} proper now, and would not provide express choices for various gender identities.

“We mainly must construct a brand new algorithm for gay relationships, which we’re blissful to do and we are going to do finally, however for now, we wish to get to product market match with our core product first,” Kozloski mentioned. “Frankly, heterosexual relationships, particularly for locating life partnership, appears to be an even bigger market, a stronger marketplace for us proper now.”

Making a profile on Keeper is a sit-down course of. The preliminary type to make an account asks for the usual particulars of many relationship apps (like your age or top), in addition to educational check scores (together with SATs), your profession ambitions, wage, and web price. It even encourages taking an exterior persona check. After you fill out the preliminary onboarding questionnaire, there are 13 extra steps, starting from importing photographs to sharing your philosophy on love.

“We do not let our customers create their very own profiles,” Kozloski mentioned. Keeper makes use of the knowledge it gathers to curate a profile for you.

Kozloski mentioned Keeper makes use of a non-AI algorithm first to streamline potential matches, specializing in knowledge factors like age vary initially.

“We use LLMs as soon as we have now your prime hundred that our different algorithms have recognized,” he mentioned. “The LLMs are skilled on our matchmaking insights that we have discovered to this point, and to allow them to slender down these final hundred and do the ultimate go of, ‘OK, who really is price providing amongst these.’”

A number of the AI matchmaking comes into play when analyzing “normal attractiveness” and customers’ particular attributes, like baldness or hair colour, Kozloski mentioned. The startup has additionally partnered with a workforce of researchers at Stanford, Kozloski mentioned, who assist prepare the LLMs (Keeper supplies anonymized knowledge to the analysis workforce).

Nevertheless, Keeper is not absolutely automated, and in the interim, consists of human matchmakers within the course of. If there is a match, Keeper connects the 2 individuals over textual content message.

The startup has an advanced fee construction with a hefty price ticket — however just for males.

Keeper has male customers signal a “marriage bounty” that sometimes prices $50,000 (if the person will get married) and has them pay $5,000 for any dates from the service (the date charges go towards the full bounty value, Kozloski mentioned).

Learn the newest model of Keeper’s pitch deck.

Notice: Keeper has shared an up to date model of its pitch deck, which it’s now sharing with traders, that features new particulars since its elevate in October 2024. Some particulars have been redacted.