The companion category grew up. Now it has to earn trust

For anyone building serious things, the AI companion has been easy to file under "not for us". A novelty. A curiosity. A gimmick that burns hot and fades, the way chatbots always seem to. Something happening at the edge of the culture, not the centre of a business.

That read is now wrong, and the numbers paint a picture.

Fads don't compound, categories do

Fads do not compound, but categories do. Companion apps generated around 120 million dollars in revenue in 2025, growing roughly 30% quarter on quarter into 2026 (TechCrunch and Appfigures, August 2025; Sensor Tower, first quarter 2026). People are not glancing at these products and leaving. They are paying, repeatedly, to spend time with a character.

Strip away the discomfort some people feel about that, and a plain signal is left: a large and growing audience wants to be inside a world and talk to the things that live in it, not only watch them. It is the same appetite the earlier parts of this series described, now expressed through spending behaviour.

While the demand is there, the foundations of the market are shaky.

The first wave was built on sand

The first wave of this category grew fast because it took what it wanted. Characters were spun up without a licence. Worlds were used without permission. Consent, safety and provenance were afterthoughts, if they were considered at all. That works right up until it doesn't, and the bill is now arriving as rights-holder objection and regulator attention. The unlicensed version of this category has run into exactly the wall you would expect.

So the market is choosing between two futures. One is extractive: unlicensed, brand-unsafe, built on other people's worlds without asking. The other is legitimate: licensed, consented, safe by design, built with the people who own the worlds rather than against them.

The choice is not theoretical. There are two moves this year that show why it matters.

The Disney signal

In December 2025, Disney, the most protective owner of intellectual property on earth, agreed to license more than two hundred characters from across Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars into OpenAI's platforms, on tightly bounded terms that deliberately excluded performers' likenesses and voices (Disney and OpenAI, December 2025). Disney was willing, and a first mover.

But then it fell apart. By March 2026 OpenAI had shut down the platform the deal depended on, and the partnership ended before those characters ever shipped (Variety, March 2026).

The lesson is not that the licensed model failed. It is the opposite. The most cautious rights holder in the world will license its crown jewels into an interactive AI product when the terms are right. What it will not do is hand them to a project a platform can switch off on a quarter's notice. Legitimacy is not only about the licence. It is about whether there is a serious, dedicated operator on the other side who will still be standing next year.

Now the other move. In June 2026 Hasbro launched Sixth Wall, a dedicated studio built to bring its characters, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Clue and the rest, into interactive AI experiences on licensed, consented terms (Hasbro, 3rd June 2026). Its reason for existing is the key. Hasbro said millions of people were already meeting unauthorised versions of its characters across chat, voice and gaming, and it wanted a trusted way to do it properly: authorised source material, safety guardrails, and performers paid for their voices. It even named the kind of licence this needs, "Behavioral Licensing", covering how a character thinks, speaks and behaves, not only how it looks.

Put the two together and the direction is unmistakable. The most protective owner in the world will license into this, and owners are now standing up dedicated, licensed operations to do it properly. The willingness is settled. The unlicensed free-for-all is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

What has not been built

So here is the state of play. The demand is proven and growing. The rights holders are willing, and the most sophisticated are already moving. The unlicensed version is running out of road. But Hasbro can build a studio for Hasbro's characters, and Disney can dictate terms to a foundation lab. Most rights holders are doing neither. For everyone who is not Disney or Hasbro, the licensed, safe, durable layer that sits between a world and its fans still does not exist.

The companies that will own this category are not the ones moving fastest or shouting loudest. They are the ones who treat trust as the foundation, not the fine print.

Legitimacy is not a constraint on the category. It is the product.

Sotto · London · 17.07.26

First published on LBB Online.