Companions and publishing
AI characters to talk with, and simple books made for Amazon's self-publishing service.
Companions and publishing holds 4 of the 252 stories on Aiolum: 0 run by a solo founder and 4 by a team of 2 to 10. Together they report US$10M in verified outcomes; the largest is Kindroid, US$9M annual recurring revenue, March 2026. 2 headline numbers carry evidence grade A (disclosed or verified), 0 grade B (independent press) and 1 grade C (founder claim), and 1 is grade D (reported, not verified). The median story reached its headline number 19 months after launch. The founders are in 4 countries, most often China, company registered in Hong Kong and Italy, listed as United Kingdom on TrustMRR. The most common main channel is creators and short videos (2 of 4). The tools named most often in their sources are Next.js (3), Stripe (3) and Vercel (3).
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Evidence gradesA disclosed or payment-verifiedB independent pressC the founder's own figuresD reported, not verifiedHow we verify
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The revenue trend compares the latest months in the sources with the months before them. Falling means revenue is about 15% or more below the best recent months, or the sources report a fall. The headline number is the yearly figure or the sale value on each card.
4 of 252 stories shown
It sold one narrow job to a group that already existed: people who learn from YouTube channels and paid courses how to publish many simple books on Amazon. The product carries that group's own word in its name, tutorial channels in English and Italian showed it from January 2025, and the site runs an affiliate script. Two thirds of the US$642,409 came in the first 14 months, at about US$30,300 a month. The last 12 months average about US$17,600 a month.
Read the storyThe founder had worked as a screenwriter and knew which part of the job is tool work: the page format, and keeping characters and scenes consistent across a long draft. He built the editor around that work and kept the AI in the role of a helper. He says Claude Code wrote all the code. The beta grew through invite codes that users earned by posting about it, and monthly revenue rose from US$5,136 in May 2026 to about US$46,000 in August and in September.
Read the storyIt launched in June 2023, when open-source language models had become good enough for a small company to build a companion, and when users of older companion apps were looking for a new one. The user writes the character, so a character from another app can be moved in. The company sells a subscription, prices its add-ons at the cost of the extra computing, and published an update about every eight days in 2026.
Read the storyThe two founders had run an email marketing agency in college, so they planned how to reach customers before the product was good. They built the app without coding experience, with Claude and Cursor, released it with crashes, and fixed it in public. Growth came from free posts on Instagram, TikTok and Reddit, then from a small group of creators who post about the app every day, then from paid ads on Meta. Co-founder Giancarlo Sarti told Starter Story in March 2026 that the app made US$12,900 in February 2026.
Read the storyThe next verified one-person AI business goes here. Same structure, same evidence grades.
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Every number on these cards carries an evidence grade. How Aiolum verifies explains the four grades and the five parts of each story.