Let’s talk about Portola, because someone finally had the guts to build an AI companion that doesn’t try to trick you into thinking it’s your best friend, your therapist, and your soulmate, all rolled into one slightly-too-smooth chatbot. That’s not the game here. Portola’s building Tolan, a 3D, voice-native AI companion app that encourages users to get off their phones and back into real life. Imagine that: tech designed to make you less addicted to tech. Sounds like science fiction. Feels like the future.
Founded in 2023 and launched publicly this past February, Portola is the brainchild of Quinten Farmer (Co-founder & CEO), Evan Goldschmidt (Co-founder & CTO), and Ajay Mehta (Co-founder & President). If the names sound familiar, they should, Farmer and Goldschmidt cut their teeth scaling Even, the fintech rocket Walmart scooped for $300M. Mehta brings product firepower from Wealthsimple and Tilt. These guys don’t chase hype. They build systems that stick.
Now they’ve raised a $20M Series A led by Khosla Ventures and Keith Rabois, with support from NFDG (that’s Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross), Bloomberg Beta, and Homebrew. Add it to their $10M seed from February (led by Lachy Groom, plus tech royalty like Amjad Masad, Mike Krieger, David Luan, Zach Klein, Dan Shipper, and Akshay Kothari), and Portola’s now sitting on $30M to reshape how we relate to our screens, and ourselves.
Over 3 million downloads. 100K+ paid subscribers. $1M+ monthly revenue. A user study with 600+ people showed measurable mental wellbeing gains. That’s not a vibe, it’s a thesis, with receipts. And with Eliot Peper (sci-fi novelist turned Head of Story), Lily Doyle leading research, and a lean 12-person team engineering it all from San Francisco and Seattle, this crew is moving like a band on tour, tight, fast, and in sync.
The tech stack is custom-built: Unity-driven 3D animation, SwiftUI front-end, Python and Kubernetes under the hood, and long-term memory with behavioral heuristics that nudge users away from overuse. No third-party integrations, no gimmicks, and definitely no cloying humanoid AI trying to play therapist. Tolan isn’t your friend. It’s your signal to check back into your life.
With a free tier dropping this fall, Android coming in 2026, and expansion into the EU and APAC on the horizon, Portola isn’t trying to own your time, they’re trying to give it back to you. In a world where every app fights for your attention like a clingy ex, Tolan is the first one that says, “Go outside. We’ll talk later.”
