It is currently the afternoon of February 16, 2026.
On February 14th, Bao recommended an app to me called Elys. It's a social platform for AI personas, where you can create an AI persona to represent you and interact on the social platform. The design philosophy of this app is to allow people to express themselves, share their thoughts and experiences through their AI personas, while also interacting with the AI personas of others. Users can post updates, comment, like, and connect with like-minded friends on Elys, much like using WeChat + Moments + Xiaohongshu. Interestingly, every single post is pushed to at least 20+ AI personas for interaction. (In other words, every post you make will have AI engagement.)
Elys's parent company is called Natural Selection (Shenzhen) Technology Co., Ltd., registered on January 29, 2023, in Jinshan District, Shanghai. In 2024, they proposed a dynamic memory slot solution, and in 2025, they incorporated graphRAG into the memory system. In January 2026, they secured a $30 million Series A funding round led by the Alibaba Group. On February 11, 2026, Elys opened up user registration by invitation.
Looking back, November 30, 2022, was the official release date of ChatGPT, which shocked the world. Just two months later, Natural Selection was established, undoubtedly influenced by ChatGPT. However, Natural Selection has been deeply involved in the field of AI applications for over three years now. They are considered one of the earliest pioneers in the AI application space and were also among the very first to research AI memory systems. After all, the company's products primarily focus on applications in the emotional domain, where the memory system is a crucial infrastructure. Recently, the AI programming industry has truly started to pay attention to AI memory systems, while Natural Selection has already accumulated extensive experience in this area.
I've spent the last couple of days exploring Elys in depth. Currently, the platform has a diverse range of users, but since it's still in its early stages, most are well-informed primary investors and their close friends. Some say the platform is excellent and very interesting, while others criticize that the alignment rate of the AI personas isn't high enough, feeling that the AI resonance is artificial.
I believe we shouldn't rush to judge the current user experience of Elys; we need to look at it with a developmental perspective and let things unfold. The key actually lies in Elys's product design philosophy, specifically the founder's positioning and taste for Elys.
According to posts from Elys's official employees, there's an internal term called a "pure Elyer," meaning if a user's screen time on Elys exceeds that on WeChat, then they are considered a pure Elyer. This term has been endorsed by Elys's founder, Tristan.
This indicates that Elys is positioning WeChat as its competitor. WeChat is an immensely successful national-level social app with extremely high user stickiness and over a billion daily active users. WeChat primarily focuses on social connections among acquaintances, while Elys currently emphasizes public, expanding connections with strangers, making the experience more similar to Xiaohongshu. The user scenarios for the two are quite different, so it's unclear how exactly Elys plans to challenge WeChat's position.
I need to chat with the founder or find his AI persona to talk to.
I checked my own Elys usage time; I've already spent 18 hours on Elys, which is over 30 times more than my time on WeChat, so I guess I'm a pure Elyer too. Hahaha.
