The archive · AI & Models · Product decision · 2025–2026
AnuNeko: Cai Haoyu's emotional AI cat companion shut down 8 months after launch
Anuttacon's anime-style AI cat companion AnuNeko, launched by Genshin Impact co-founder Cai Haoyu at the end of 2025, was permanently shut down on 29 July 2026.
Anuttacon
What the business is
Anuttacon, the AI company founded by Genshin Impact co-creator Cai Haoyu, built AnuNeko, a free AI companion app centered on a talking black-cat persona with its own moods, personalities and variants, designed for emotional chat rather than task help.
How it started
Anuttacon, the AI company founded by miHoYo co-founder Cai Haoyu, ran several AI experiments through 2025, including the Steam game 'Whispers from the Star' (August 2025), in which players talk in real time with an astronaut named Stella. AnuNeko, launched at the end of 2025, was the consumer companion experiment: its default black-cat avatar explicitly claims its own emotions, teases and argues with users, and offers variants such as 'Orange Cat' and 'Exotic Shorthair'.
What happened
AnuNeko attracted initial users with emotional, personality-driven conversation, but the product had no task, game or progression loop to drive long-term use, and no clear paid points. Industry reporting cited 'high download, low retention' economics for pure AI-companion chat and per-conversation inference costs that rise with the most active users. In mid-July 2026 China's regulations on anthropomorphic AI interaction services took effect, adding compliance pressure to the category. Anuttacon meanwhile previewed LPM 1.0 (April 2026), a 17B-parameter real-time character video model, and shipped no new versions of 'Whispers from the Star'.
How it ended up
Anuttacon announced that AnuNeko would cease operations permanently at 23:59 Pacific Time on 29 July 2026: the app, all chat records and user data were deleted, with a farewell message written in the cat's voice. The team attributed the closure to its limited size and said resources were being redirected to other projects; later reporting said the company is shifting focus to LLM and agent capabilities.
Background
AnuNeko was the consumer AI-companion experiment of Anuttacon, the AI company founded by miHoYo co-founder Cai Haoyu, creator of Genshin Impact. Launched at the end of 2025, it centered on a black-cat persona that explicitly claims its own emotions, teases and argues with users, offered in variants including 'Orange Cat' and 'Exotic Shorthair' — a deliberate contrast to task-oriented assistants.
The bet was that emotional, personality-driven conversation could make a standalone AI companion a mainstream consumer product. The app launched free with no clear paid points, while Anuttacon ran parallel experiments: the Steam game 'Whispers from the Star' (August 2025), where players converse in real time with a stranded astronaut, and LPM 1.0 (April 2026), a 17B-parameter real-time character video model.
Early users came, but industry reporting points to the structural problems of pure emotional chat: high download, low retention, no progression or gameplay to keep users returning, and inference cost that scales with the heaviest users — so the most loyal customers were the most expensive. China's regulations on anthropomorphic AI interaction services took effect in mid-July 2026, and by then AnuNeko had no sustainable commercial loop.
On 29 July 2026, at 23:59 Pacific Time, AnuNeko shut down permanently: the app and all chat records were deleted, with a farewell message in the cat's voice telling users to come say goodbye. Anuttacon said the team was too small and resources would move elsewhere; reporting says the company is now focusing on LLM and agent capabilities, and sister project 'Whispers from the Star' has had no new versions since launch.
What has to be true
- Pure companionship chat has no retention or growth engine: novelty brought users in, but without tasks, progression or gameplay they churned.
- The economics inverted: inference cost scales with the heaviest users, so the most loyal customers were the most expensive, while the product was free with no paid points.
- China's mid-July 2026 rules on anthropomorphic AI interaction services added compliance pressure exactly where free emotional-chat products operate.
- Anuttacon treated AnuNeko as one validation experiment in a portfolio: once feedback was collected, resources moved to LLM and agent R&D instead of fixing retention.
- A small team launching free with no monetization made even a popular companion structurally unable to pay for itself.
What can be applied
An emotional companion without a task, game or monetization loop pays per conversation forever: costs rise with the most loyal users, so Anuttacon killed AnuNeko and moved resources to agents.
Aftermath
As of late July 2026 AnuNeko is permanently closed: the app, chat records and user data are gone, with only the farewell announcement remaining as a record. Anuttacon itself continues: it is reportedly shifting R&D toward large language models and agent capabilities, its LLM division moved from game-content generation toward agent systems, and the LPM video model work has been internally suspended. Chinese media read the closure as a cooling signal for consumer AI companions — miHoYo's similar BSide: Olivia Lin was shut down less than a month after its July 2026 Steam launch.
Sources
- Cai Haoyu's AI Product AnuNeko Announces Permanent Shutdown Less Than a Year Post-Launch
- 蔡浩宇的AnuNeko关停、米哈游“BSide”上线未满一月停运 AI情感陪伴试验遭遇现实重击
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe what you are building, and see who is betting on the same thing.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card