Ego AI announced today that it has raised $6.7 million in early seed funding to accelerate development on is new projects: The first is character.world, an engine built on the company’s AI to create human-like behavior for characters in games. The second is the Character Context Protocol (CCP), an open-source framework enabling AI characters to maintain their personalities and memories across multiple spaces.
According to Ego, the company’s solutions are intended to create a standard for AI characters who not only feel alive in the sense that their behavior is believable — but to maintain memories and relationships within a plethora of digital spaces. It also hopes to facilitate broader adoption through the release of its CCP. Ego AI was one of the 2025 Game Changers honored at GamesBeat Next last year.
Vishnu Hari, Ego’s founder and CEO, said in a statement, “Games and digital worlds have always struggled with flat, scripted non-player characters (NPCs) that feel mechanical and forgettable. Ego AI is tackling that head-on with characters who act, react and remember like real players. Our mission is to move beyond chat windows and give people living, persistent characters who can make games richer, worlds more alive and interactions more meaningful.”
Investors in the early seed funding round include Patron, Y Combinator, Access, Boost VC and angels such as Balaji Srinivasan, former Coinbase CTO; Logan Kilpatrick, product manager of Google DeepMind; Arjun Sethi, co-founder and chairman of Tribe Capital); Immad Akhund, CEO of Mercury; and Siqi Chen, founder of Runway.
Making characters feel (and look) alive
Ego’s character.world is a platform that makes it easier for in-game characters to have natural-sounding conversations, pick up on vocal cues, keep track of their developing relationship with human players and even cross digital universes into platforms like Discord or livestreaming services.
In addition to all of the above, Ego has released a technical whitepaper covering its approach to AI titled “Behavior is All You Need.” The paper covers the four components of believable AI people: Personality, needs, emotions and memory. According to Hari and co-author Connor Brennan, “Players can suspend disbelief when bots behave in ways that suggest underlying intention.”
Adam Draper, founder of Boost VC, said in a separate statement, “What excites me about Ego is their approach to one of gaming’s biggest challenges: creating characters that truly feel alive. Their foundation model is a breakthrough in AI character behavior. We’re entering a new era where AI characters will carry personality, memory, and emotion—indistinguishable from human players—and Ego is positioned to lead it. And Vish is the most resilient founder in the space.”