Born

1.2M DAUs on Friends

Today we introduce Friends and preview Life, as we continue shaping the future of AI companionship. Pengu evolved into Friends. A platform of trustworthy, fun, and social AI characters designed for moments that matter most. Pengu for social connection, Mellow for learning, Bao for wellbeing. With 1M+ daily actives and growing, Friends is the defining AI companion platform for a generation. For the first time, we're also previewing Life, a photorealistic digital companion experience. Each AI friend becomes an extension of their user, creating personalized content that is shaped by ongoing interaction. Every breakout consumer company has emerged from a major technology or platform shift. AI friends is next and we're building it.

We’re excited to welcome @o_kwasniewski and @SzymonRybczak to Born. They are exceptional engineers and fit perfectly into our mission to rethink how people connect with AI friends through our upcoming product. Together, we’re building the category-defining company in companionship.

We are hiring React Native engineers If you care deeply about craft, product, and building the future of consumer social AI, join us You’ll be working closely with @fabiankamberi and me DMs are open

More on our next chapter at #products" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">born.com/#products

Today, we’re officially releasing React Native Godot to the public. For the first time, every React Native developer can create games with an amazing UI on top. This unlocks a new era of apps and games. github.com/borndotcom/rea…

Start over when good isn't great.

A technically interesting challenge when building Pengu was generating transparent images for each user’s unique Pengu. With over 350 clothing items and countless possible combinations, plus varying device sizes, pre-generating images in the cloud quickly became infeasible. To solve this, we moved the computation to the device itself by leveraging React Native Godot. Here’s how it works: ① The user changes the Pengu’s clothing, and React Native calls a GDScript function. ② Godot opens a subwindow with a specific scene that renders the Pengu. ③ Godot takes a “screenshot” and closes the subwindow. ④ React Native receives the File Path of the screenshot as a return value. You can get quite creative with how you leverage Godot’s subwindows. Screenshots are captured in just a few milliseconds, without the user ever noticing.

One of the most important features for Pengu was the ability to download and launch different games (Godot pck's) on the fly. Under the hood, our React Native Godot library manages the entire Godot lifecycle: stopping, cleaning up, and starting a new instance with a different pck. Everything happens within milliseconds, without restarting the app.

Please be kind and smile back at our Power User Curve

We’re open-sourcing React Native Godot this Sunday. After a year of testing, polishing, and making it scalable across all the different Android devices. Over the next few days, we’ll share all the different features we’ve built and best practices on how to use them. We built much of Pengu’s core functionality on top of this library, and it opened up a whole new world of possibilities for us. I can’t wait to see what you’ll all build with it!

@JannisRingwald 🫡

Hi yo. I’m in Berlin. This is literally the dream I had 5–6 years ago. I still remember those days scrolling through Stack Overflow, daydreaming about jobs in the EU or the US. I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to happen — or if all the quiet efforts I made along the way were actually pushing me here without even realizing it. And yet, here I am — in Berlin, working in such a dynamic environment surrounded by incredible, passionate people at @borndotcom. They’re the ones who helped turn my dream into reality. Much respect! … Just missing home a little bit ❤️ #born #develop #berlin #relocate

We built this onboarding flow in React Native that feels better than most native apps Here’s how we did it: ① Patched react-native-screens for a custom transition ② Button and stepper are rendered on top of the stack ③ Synced button state across screens via context The button and header are positioned absolutely above the stack. When a screen focuses, it updates the shared button state (text, disabled state) via context The hardest part is keeping the keyboard open during screen transitions. We solved it with hidden TextInputs that get focused programmatically before navigating The result: one button flows across every screen and surfs the keyboard

@fabiankamberi ⏳

Very excited to unveil our new product at Born very soon — find a technical preview by Baran below. Separately, Pengu continues to lead within the AI character space. We are rapidly growing and have 7x’d our active subscriptions since July. New characters and features are also on the way.

We’ve been doing this for a long time at @borndotcom. Everything in consumer is a funnel. Get the core funnel right, and retention becomes inevitable. I’ll share much more here on how we’re building consumer AI apps at scale.

For our new product, we built a chat in React Native that feels like iMessage Here's how we did it: ① Fabric Swift View ② UICollectionView ③ SwiftUI cells via UIHostingConfiguration React is responsible for the state - mutations, fetching, infinite loading - all via React Query. The native Fabric view is purely for rendering. React decides what to show, native decides how to show it The bridge between three frameworks was tricky but worth it. UICollectionView animations come for free and scroll performance is native-smooth No blank spaces and no FPS drops - all powered by the New Architecture Who wants to see the code?

We are hiring world-class engineering talent obsessed with building the future of consumer AI. #careers" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">born.com/#careers

@fabiankamberi ❤️

Read the full manifesto: #obsession" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">born.com/#obsession

Consumer social doesn't need form factors that force you to do things. It should multiply what's inside you and give you tools to be human in ways you can't be anywhere else. That's how you reach billions of people. Human relationships are messy, beautifully and brutally so. Greatness starts when you tackle the hard stuff.