Soul App files for IPO, riding early-mover status in AI-backed hunt for emotional satisfaction

The social platform plans to entice investors with the combination of its self-developed AI model, immersive social scenarios, and strong profitability

Key Takeaways:

• Tencent-backed Soulgate, operator of the Soul App, is seeking a premium valuation in its Hong Kong IPO based on its early adoption of AI technology into its platform
• The company says high user engagement is fueling improvements to its AI model, enhancing user experience and driving new monetization opportunities

By Doug Young

ChatGPT may have the answers to all your questions on everyday matters, but Soulgate Inc., which runs the Soul App social platform in China, thinks it has the right stuff to nurture human souls that are at the heart of its name. Seizing on the AI momentum sparked by ChatGPT in 2023, the company rolled out Soul X, its proprietary native emotional intelligence large model in December of the same year.

That head start has inspired Soul, backed by internet giant Tencent, to figure out how to better monetize its business, which centers on connecting people based on common interests. In Soul’s universe, all users interact with avatars, shedding the baggage of real-world identity to connect based on who they are, rather than what they are.

Soul’s Soul X is trained on the company’s vast pool of user data sourced from the platform’s dynamic public scenes, such as the Soul Square. Soul says the model, which only uses compliantly gathered data, “possesses multi-modal perception and real-time interactive capabilities, focusing on breakthroughs in emotional perception and empathetic companionship.”

The company has monetized the business mostly through a growing stable of emotional value goods and services, including virtual items and membership privileges, that it sells to its users. Its growing skill in that regard has lifted Soul to profitability – a feat that very few AI-centric companies have achieved due to the huge costs of developing new models and keeping them updated.

AI is the ticket

Soul is at the forefront of a recent movement among user-generated content (UGC) platforms to better leverage AI, and for AI model operators to leverage the huge pools of user data that such platforms possess. Snapchat (SNAP.US) recently entered that race as well, securing a $400 million payment agreement from Perplexity in November for AI search integration. The move underscores that in the current AI era, a massive, engaged audience like Snapchat’s can be a more immediate and monetizable asset.

Soul’s AI headstart could make it a hot ticket as it resubmitted its Hong Kong IPO application on Nov. 27. According to its filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, its focus is squarely on Gen Z, who made up more than 78.7% of its users. The company has been profitable since 2023, reporting adjusted profits of 337.3 million yuan ($47.7 million) in 2024 and 286.4 million yuan in the first eight months of 2025. Its gross margins came in at healthy levels of 83.7% and 81.5% for those periods, respectively. Meanwhile, its revenue climbed 19.7% from 1.85 billion yuan in 2023 to 2.21 billion yuan in 2024, and was up another 17.8% year-on-year in the first eight months of 2025 at 1.68 billion yuan.

The company previously filed to list in the U.S. in 2021, but about a year later withdrew that application. It moved its sights to Hong Kong with a new listing application in June 2022, but that application expired.

A new listing would come into one of the hottest Hong Kong IPO markets in years, where nearly every new application boasts of how companies are using AI to make their businesses more efficient. While some of those claims look dubious, aimed more at creating hype than doing anything truly unique, Soul can legitimately say it began using generative AI well before the current craze.

In its 2022 Hong Kong IPO application, published a full half year before ChatGPT launched its first product, Soul discussed how its AI algorithm enables users to find like-minded people.

“When AI is fully integrated into our social networks, this new AI-driven productivity will transform everyday life – from socializing to digital living and consumption. It will create new markets, like ’emotional value-to-price consumption,’ and lead to entirely new products and business models for the social industry,” said Chief Technology Officer Tao Ming in a previous company announcement.

The rising monetization of AI is also evident in the latest third-quarter results of other tech firms. Kuaishou’s (1024.HK) AI-driven marketing and video model helped to boost the company’s revenue, while Tencent (0700.HK) saw a 21% surge in marketing services income from improved AI targeting.

Growing stable of models

Soul App started out as a platform focused on person-to-person connections, helping its pool of users meet others with similar interests and world views. Since 2017, the app has used the company’s self-developed AI-powered recommendation algorithm, which can perceive users’ cognitive and behavioral patterns with high precision, to drive user recommendation and social connections.

The company says it has been “systematically exploring the deep integration of AI and social scenarios” since 2020. This long-term investment culminated in the 2023 launch of its proprietary Soul X large language model, marking a significant milestone in its AI journey.

Soul X leverages multi-modal perception to understand user preferences at a granular level, recommending like-minded friends and relevant communities, including content feeds, interest groups, and audio party rooms. With long-term memory and contextual awareness, the “Chat Spark” powered by Soul X offers potential conversation starters and replies during one-on-one dialogues, while the “AI Inspiration” tool helps refine and format posts. By enhancing social connectivity and engagement, Soul is positioning its AI-driven communities as key spaces for emotional consumption.

According to its application, Soul App had around 11 million daily active users (DAU) in the first eight months of 2025. AI-powered emotional value services accounted for more than 90% of the company’s revenue. Such items include virtual products that can be purchased using the company’s social currency called Soul Coins – such as avatars, virtual gifts and props and recommendation privileges.

Soul says high user engagement is driving improvements to its AI models and algorithms, enabling smarter applications and expanding its digital community. It adds that these advances enhance user experience and open up new commercialization opportunities in areas like advertising and IP, and create a self-reinforcing “user-AI-platform” cycle.

At the end of the day, Soul’s AI pedigree and profitability may help it to score a valuation premium following its IPO. Its proprietary AI models look well positioned to attract a growing audience of Gen Z users increasingly looking for more satisfying emotional connections and immersive interactive experiences.

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