Paul Scherer has a theory about why so many people feel lonelier than ever, even as AI companions proliferate: maybe the technology designed to keep us company is making things worse.
It's a counterintuitive pitch—especially coming from someone building yet another consumer AI product. But it's the one that convinced Benchmark to lead a $15 million seed round in Scherer's San Francisco startup, Eigen, announced April 16, 2026. The firm was joined by Pinterest cofounder Ben Silbermann and David Singleton, who sold his own startup, Dreamer, to Meta.
Eigen remains in stealth mode, revealing little beyond a cryptic landing page that promises to invent "the internet's shared friend." But in investor conversations and scattered public remarks, Scherer, just 22, has outlined a vision that runs counter to the dominant mode of consumer AI: rather than creating one-on-one chatbot relationships, he wants to build something synchronous and collective. Something that enriches real-world connections instead of replacing them.
Whether that vision will resonate with users or prove commercially viable remains an open question.
The Loneliness Paradox
Sarah Tavel, a venture partner at Benchmark who championed the deal, told Fortune she'd been hunting for a consumer AI "friend" concept when Scherer walked into her orbit. What sealed it wasn't just the technology—it was the philosophy.
"He had this contrarian take," Tavel said. Not another hyper-personalized companion. Something shared.
The timing of that bet is worth noting. AI companionship has become big business, fast. The market hit $37.12 billion in 2025, according to data from Precedence Research cited by Fortune, with projections soaring to $552.49 billion by 2035. Products like Replika and Character.ai have built devoted followings.
Yet half of U.S. adults reported feeling isolated in the American Psychological Association's 2025 Stress in America survey. The disconnect is hard to ignore—and Scherer believes the two trends might be related, though his hypothesis remains unproven. If AI companions encourage retreat into private digital relationships, he argues, they could inadvertently deepen the very loneliness they claim to solve.
It's a provocative argument. Also an unproven one.
A Circuitous Route to Silicon Valley
Scherer's path to raising one of the larger seed rounds in recent consumer AI was anything but linear.
He left high school at 17 in a small village outside Frankfurt and taught himself to code. By 18, he'd caught the attention of Ariel Renous, cofounder of Augment—an alternative MBA program based in Paris—who spotted him on Twitter. Scherer moved to Paris, helped scale Augment past $1 million in monthly revenue, then pivoted again. In May 2025, he arrived in San Francisco on an O-1 visa, the so-called "genius visa" typically reserved for accomplished professionals.
Less than a year later, he'd closed $15 million.
The speed of that ascent is unusual, though perhaps less so in a venture landscape still eager to fund consumer AI experiments. Benchmark's involvement lends credibility—the firm has backed formative companies like Twitter, Uber, and Snapchat—but early-stage valuations can be forgiving. Dealroom estimates Eigen's post-money valuation at approximately $75 million, though that figure hasn't been independently confirmed.
Hiring for "U-Shaped" Talent
According to Fortune, most of the $15 million will go toward building out the team. And the company is hiring with a deliberate philosophy: what it calls a "U-shaped" team. On one end, senior engineers and product leaders with years of experience. On the other, unusually young creative types willing to take risks.
According to Fortune, nearly all of Eigen's current engineers are former founders themselves—a detail that suggests Scherer is betting on people who've built and shipped products, not just worked on them. The company is also looking for a screenwriter, a hint that storytelling and narrative design might play a larger role than in typical AI products.
Current openings listed on Eigen's careers page include Member of Technical Staff, Creative Director, and Business Operations. All are San Francisco-based.
The Unanswered Question
What Eigen doesn't yet have is a public product.
Stealth mode offers obvious advantages—freedom to iterate without public scrutiny, space to develop intellectual property, time to refine a story. It also makes evaluation harder. Investors and industry watchers are left parsing tea leaves: a landing page tagline, a hiring strategy, a founder's philosophical musings.
The real test will come when Eigen emerges from the shadows. The AI companion space is crowded, well-funded, and moving fast. Convincing users to embrace a "shared friend" over a personalized one will require more than a compelling thesis. It'll require a product that feels fundamentally different—and fundamentally better.
For now, Scherer has the runway to find out.
