The archive · Consumer Apps · Product decision · 2023–2026
HakkoAI: LynkSoul's screen-watching game buddy wins PH #1, 10M users
LynkSoul's AI desktop companion watches your game and coaches in voice; PH #1 Oct 24 2025, 10M registered users two months after launch.
HakkoAI (LynkSoul / HAKKO AI PTE. LTD.)
What the business is
A desktop AI game companion (China: DouDou Game Companion; overseas: HakkoAI) that reads gameplay in real time with its own vision-language model, offering voice tactics and encouragement across thousands of games, and expanding into movie-watching and study sessions.
Starting capital：Angel round Jul 2023 of tens of millions of RMB from Source Code Capital and Unity Ventures; Series A Jan 2024 with Paradigm Fund and CDH Investments (amount undisclosed).
How it started
LynkSoul was founded in April 2023 by Liu Binxin, a former Bilibili VP who had also led teams at Baidu and 360. He chose the AI-companion track but rejected the text-chat form, betting that perception of the user's real activity mattered more. The team built its own vision-language model, LynkSoul VLM v1, tuned for real-time game-screen understanding, and launched the domestic DouDou Game Companion 1.0 in late August 2025; it added about 1 million users in 10 days. HakkoAI v1.0 followed overseas in September 2025.
What happened
On 2025-10-24 HakkoAI was hunted by Chris Messina and finished #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt with 351 upvotes. On 2025-11-24 the company announced 10M+ registered users globally within two months of the September release and expansion into North America, Japan and Europe. Reported engagement reached about 2M MAU with an average 4 hours of daily use. Growth relied on AI-PC preinstall partnerships rather than paid acquisition, and funding to that point was an angel round (Jul 2023, Source Code Capital and Unity Ventures) plus a Series A (Jan 2024, Paradigm Fund and CDH Investments). The visible weakness was quality: a roughly 2.8/5 Google Play rating with complaints that the AI character's dialogue cut off mid-sentence.
How it ended up
Still scaling as of 2026-09-02: 10M+ registered users and ~2M MAU per mid-2026 reporting, monetized through Pro ($9.99/month) and Ultra ($19.99/month) tiers, with the team beta-testing movie-watching and shopping companions while working to fix dialogue quality and retention.
Background
HakkoAI is a desktop AI companion from Chinese-founded LynkSoul that sits beside a PC game, reads the screen in real time, and talks the player through bosses, puzzles and losses — praise when you win, comfort when you don't. Its domestic twin is DouDou Game Companion (逗逗游戏伙伴). Founder Liu Binxin, a former Bilibili VP, started LynkSoul in April 2023 and deliberately avoided the Character.AI-style text box, building a proprietary vision-language model, LynkSoul VLM v1, to perceive gameplay.
The product went live in China in late August 2025 (about 1 million users in 10 days), then overseas as HakkoAI 1.0 in September 2025. On October 24, 2025, HakkoAI was #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt with 351 upvotes. By November 24 the company said it had passed 10 million registered users within two months of the launch, across North America, Japan and Europe; mid-2026 reporting put monthly actives near 2 million with an average of four hours of daily use.
The bet was distribution as much as product: instead of the tens of millions Character.AI and peers spend on ads, Hakko exchanged an 'AI showcase app' slot with AI-PC chipmakers such as Intel, getting roughly a third of users preinstalled. The unresolved problem was quality — a Google Play rating around 2.8/5 over truncated AI dialogue — and the long-term threat that Tencent, NetEase or Microsoft build game awareness into the OS or game client itself.
What has to be true
- Scenario over chat: Hakko bet an AI that perceives the game and accompanies play would beat chatbots that wait for typed messages — and logged ~4 hours of daily use per active.
- Near-zero-cost distribution: AI-PC preinstall deals with chipmakers supplied roughly a third of users, bypassing the paid-ad war of text companions.
- Model moat attempt: LynkSoul VLM v1 was built specifically for game-screen understanding rather than tuned on general data.
- Timing bet: it rode the 2025-26 AI-PC shipment wave as a 'killer app' demo, while treating big-game-studio entry as the main risk.
What can be applied
Embed AI into behavior users already love: Hakko joined 4-hour gaming sessions through near-zero-cost AI-PC preinstalls, leaving product quality, not positioning, as its open wound.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-02 HakkoAI is still running and scaling: more than 10 million registered users and roughly 2 million MAU per Narku's June 2026 profile, with Pro ($9.99/month) and Ultra ($19.99/month) tiers and 1M+ Google Play installs. The team was beta-testing movie-watching and shopping companions. Acknowledged weak spots: a ~2.8/5 Google Play rating over truncated dialogue, high compute cost of real-time VLM inference, and the risk that Tencent, NetEase or Windows Copilot build similar features into their clients. No shutdown or exit had been announced.
Sources
- HakkoAI Surpasses 10 Million Registered Users Worldwide Just Two Months After Launch
- PH今日热榜 | 2025-10-25 (HakkoAI #1, 351 votes)
- Not Chatting, but Playing Along: Why a Former Bilibili VP's AI Companion Got Ten Million Users
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