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Circle Labs
Techstars '22San Francisco, US · 7 known investors
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Circle Labs offers a group chat workspace where users collaborate with friends and named AI agents ("shapes") that can search, code, design, and complete tasks in a shared thread. The agents take on user-assigned roles, run autonomous self-improving task loops with feedback, and build context over time across use cases like trip planning, studying, and gaming.
Also known as Shapes · Shapes Inc
Investors · 7
How we know: F2 Venture Capital's portfolio page · Not right? Tell us
How we know: the Techstars portfolio · open dataset · Top 3000 Accelerator Startups (no YC) 2026-08 · open dataset · 5k.vc investor directory · Not right? Tell us
How we know: Transpose Platform Management's portfolio page · Not right? Tell us
How we know: funding news · axios.com · research · lsvp.com · open dataset · 5k.vc investor directory · Not right? Tell us
How we know: research · lsvp.com · Not right? Tell us
Also in the syndicate · 1
Company profile
researched Sep 2026Circle Labs, Inc. (also identified as Shapes Inc) is an AI company that operates a creator platform for building virtual characters powered by large language models. The characters, which the company calls "Shapes," are configured with a base level of personality, context and intelligence, and are positioned as general-purpose social agents intended to blend into users' existing social lives rather than to function as conventional assistants.
Once created, a Shape can be deployed across social and communication platforms including Discord, Twitter/X and Instagram, and carries persistent memory that follows it across those platforms and grows as it accumulates interactions. Described use cases include renditions of anime or video-game characters, virtual twins of creators, AI representations of brand mascots that post on a brand's behalf, and AI stand-ins for a user in their own conversations. The company also runs a group chat workspace in which users collaborate with friends and named AI agents that take on assigned roles and run self-improving task loops across use cases such as trip planning, studying and gaming.
The company's terms of service are issued by Circle Labs, Inc. and cover a website, AI chat applications and related content, set a minimum user age of 13 subject to local digital-consent ages, restrict use to non-commercial purposes, and disclaim liability for content produced by the AI, including defamatory or offensive output.
Founding story
The company was co-founded by Anushk Mittal and Noorie Dhingra, who explored where people would actually converse with AI-powered non-player characters and concluded that such characters belonged on the social and messaging platforms where people already talk to each other. Through repeated iteration against that hypothesis they built a platform allowing anyone to generate their own AI characters.
Business model
Circle Labs operates a creator platform: users and businesses create AI characters through Circle Labs' tools and deploy them into third-party social and messaging environments, with the company retaining the conversational datasets generated by those interactions. Its terms of service grant users a limited, revocable, non-exclusive license to the service and prohibit commercial use by users.
Traction
During a closed beta lasting several months prior to November 2022, community members' interactions with Shapes triggered millions of messages, and the company reported a critical mass of creators requesting access to the creator tool.
Latest developments
As of a December 2023 Forbes Technology Council profile, founder Anushk Mittal described Circle Labs as having raised over $4.2 million and as offering a platform for creating AI-enabled avatars with distinct personalities for use across Twitter, Discord and Instagram, with company size listed at 11-50 people.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Circle Labs is positioned in the consumer generative-AI segment focused on AI-powered non-player characters and companions, a category its lead investor frames as an emerging market where the company had an early head start. Lightspeed listed the company as private and at seed stage as of its 2022 investment.
The platform is creator-first, allowing non-technical users to build, deploy and scale characters, and Shapes carry persistent, cross-platform memory so a character's personality and context accumulate across different social networks rather than resetting per session. Its investor argues the volume of conversation generated during early beta use constitutes a data advantage that enriches the models powering the characters over time.
Technology
The characters are built on large language models, which supply general world knowledge and conversational quality, combined with per-character personality and context configuration and persistent memory that spans multiple social platforms and deepens with continued interaction.
Go-to-market
Distribution runs through existing social and community platforms — principally Discord communities, plus Twitter/X and Instagram — where creators deploy Shapes that other community members can interact with. Access to the creator tool was initially gated through a closed beta with a waitlist of requesting creators.
Creators building AI characters for online communities, businesses and brands wanting AI representations of mascots or personalities, and consumers interacting with AI friends inside Discord servers and other social platforms. The service is open to users aged 13 and above, subject to guardian agreement for minors.
Geography
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, with distribution through globally available social platforms such as Discord, Twitter/X and Instagram.
History
Lightspeed lists the company (as Shapes Inc) as founded in 2021. Before the November 2022 seed announcement, the team iterated through a series of product hypotheses and shipped rapid updates around the emerging culture of Discord communities, arriving at a creator tool for AI-powered characters that ran in closed beta for several months. Lightspeed led a $4.2M seed round announced on 7 November 2022, and by late 2023 founder Anushk Mittal described the company as having raised over $4.2 million.
Risks & controversies
Circle Labs' terms of service disclaim liability for material generated by its AI, including content that may be defamatory or offensive, and place the risk of resulting harm on the user. The product's distribution depends on third-party social platforms such as Discord, Twitter/X and Instagram.
Compiled by commissioned research from 7 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 3
launches, deals, and filingsLightspeed Venture Partners announced it was leading a $4.2M seed round in Circle Labs, with participation from Haystack, Scott Belsky and AI Grant Fund.
$4.2M source ↗
At the time of the seed announcement, Circle Labs was recruiting for engineering, product and marketing positions.
The company vetted its creator platform for AI-powered characters in closed beta for several months, with creators requesting access and community interactions generating millions of messages.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 7
primary sources listed
7 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Circle Labs do?
- Circle Labs is a San Francisco AI company whose platform lets anyone create and deploy conversational AI characters called Shapes.
- Who are Circle Labs's investors?
- Circle Labs's investors include F2 Venture Capital, Techstars, Transpose Platform Management, Haystack, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Scott Belsky.
- Where is Circle Labs headquartered?
- Circle Labs is headquartered in San Francisco, US.