Keeper, an AI matchmaking startup, thinks it can help deliver your “soulmate” to you. And if it can’t, it’ll let you know.
“We’re saying we actually know who could be your soulmate or not,” Jake Kozloski, Keeper’s CEO, told Business Insider. “We’re not going to waste your time and pretend that a hundred thousand of these people could be. We’ll tell you no.”
Founded in 2022, the dating platform uses layers of algorithms and AI models to match people who sign up for its service. The startup is now disclosing for the first time, exclusively to Business Insider, that it raised a $4 million pre-seed investment in October 2024, led by Lightbank and Lakehouse Ventures. Goodwater Capital and Champion Hill Ventures participated in the round, among others.
Investors “see AI as an inflection point in the dating app landscape” and an opportunity to “disrupt the incumbents,” Kozloski said.
Keeper isn’t the only startup attempting to shake up the online dating market. Other AI matchmaking apps, such as Sitch and Amata, have raised millions to build next-generation dating apps. Dating app incumbents like Tinder and Bumble are also making plays with AI-powered experiences.
Kozloski said the company’s values were another piece of its pitch that attracted some investors.
“They feel like there’s a marriage crisis adjacent to the whole Elon Musk fertility crisis stuff that he talks about,” said Kozloski, who described Keeper as being “friendly with the pronatalist movement.”
Wanting kids, though, isn’t a requirement to use Keeper, Kozloski added.
Since launching, Keeper has had more than 1.5 million sign-ups, and about 300,000 of those have made accounts, Kozloski said. Among that pool, there have been a “small number” of matches. Keeper didn’t share exactly how many matches it’s made, but according to its pitch deck, 10% of dates from its beta version resulted in marriage. With its funding, Keeper has been building out its matchmaking technology over the past year.
Keeper is limited to heterosexual couples right now, and doesn’t offer explicit options for different gender identities.
“We basically have to build a new algorithm for homosexual relationships, which we’re happy to do and we will do eventually, but for now, we want to get to product market fit with our core product first,” Kozloski said. “Frankly, heterosexual relationships, especially for finding life partnership, seems to be a bigger market, a stronger market for us right now.”
Making a profile on Keeper is a sit-down process. The initial form to make an account asks for the standard details of many dating apps (like your age or height), as well as academic test scores (including SATs), your career ambitions, salary, and net worth. It even encourages taking an external personality test. After you fill out the initial onboarding questionnaire, there are 13 more steps, ranging from uploading photos to sharing your philosophy on love.
“We don’t let our users create their own profiles,” Kozloski said. Keeper uses the information it gathers to curate a profile for you.
Kozloski said Keeper uses a non-AI algorithm first to streamline potential matches, focusing on data points like age range initially.
“We use LLMs once we have your top hundred that our other algorithms have identified,” he said. “The LLMs are trained on our matchmaking insights that we’ve learned so far, and so they can narrow down those last hundred and do the final pass of, ‘OK, who actually is worth offering among these.'”
Some of the AI matchmaking comes into play when analyzing “general attractiveness” and users’ specific attributes, like baldness or hair color, Kozloski said. The startup has also partnered with a team of researchers at Stanford, Kozloski said, who help train the LLMs (Keeper provides anonymized data to the research team).
However, Keeper isn’t fully automated, and for the time being, includes human matchmakers in the process. If there’s a match, Keeper connects the two people over text message.
The startup has a complicated payment structure with a hefty price tag — but only for men.
Keeper has male users sign a “marriage bounty” that typically costs $50,000 (if the user gets married) and has them pay $5,000 for any dates from the service (the date fees go toward the total bounty cost, Kozloski said).
Read the most recent version of Keeper’s pitch deck.
Note: Keeper has shared an updated version of its pitch deck, which it is now sharing with investors, that includes new details since its raise in October 2024. Some details have been redacted.
Keeper claims its AI-powered matchmaking is the ‘most accurate’
It touts that 1 in 10 dates lead to engagements
“1 in 10 Keeper first dates have led to an engagement,” the slide says.
It highlights the size of the matchmaking market
Keeper describes the matchmaking market as “old school yet shockingly massive,” per the slide.
It then says that matchmaking could be enhanced by technology
“With the opportunity to 10x,” the slide says. “When technology provides perfect matches, matchmaking will be the best way to meet your partner.”
Then, it introduces Keeper’s product
“The AI matchmaker that will introduce you to your soulmate on the first match,” the slides says. It also includes product imagery.
It showcases how its beta version performed
“Our v1 worked extremely well,” the slide says.
It says that 10% of dates lead to marriage.
The deck shows press and social media content about the startup
Keeper showcases how many people have signed up
It says it has had 1.5 million sign-ups. “This makes us the largest pool of any traditional matchmaker,” the slides says. It lists competitors like Tawkify, Keeper, Ditto, Sitch, and Known Dating.
Keeper explains its network effect
“Everyone signs up if we deliver soulmates on the first match,” the slide says.
“The first mover quickly becomes a monopoly,” it says.
Then, it introduces its founders
Here’s what the slide says:
Jake Kozloski: Founder, CEO
- Repeat founder with previous exit
- 8 years startup product management and growth roles
- 10 years of dating apps as a user; now happily married to wife Aliia
Toban Wiebe: Co-Founder, Head of AI
- PhD from Penn in economic/statistical modeling of Marriage Markets
- 8 years industry experience in ML/DS, most recently at Instacart and Uber
- Met his wife Dee 10 years ago in grad school via OkCupid
It also lists the researchers the startup is working with
Here are the names of the researchers:
- Michal Kosinski: PhD, Cambridge
- Geoffrey Miller: PhD, Stanford
- Naman Gupta: PhD Student, Stanford
- Ignacio Rios Uribe: PhD, Stanford
Keeper explains why it’s raising capital
“We’re raising to scale profitable human-in-the-loop matchmaking to $2M in annual revenue,” the slide says.
The deck includes its founder’s email
As well as an appendix with additional data
The deck includes a slide about marriage rates decreasing
“80% of young singles want to get married,” the slide says. “40% actually will.” It cites data from Match Group and data scientist Allen Downey.
It then maps out the incumbent dating app landscape
Dating apps are “bad at creating relationships, worth billions,” the slide says. “Imagine the value of the first product that’s great at it.”
It lists matchmaking competitors, too
“Matchmakers can’t scale,” the slide says.
Keeper shows how its LLM and vision models work
“LLMs and vision models enable scalable matchmaking for the first time in history,” the slides says.
It goes into more depth on its tech
“We’ve built the most accurate process in the world,” the slide says.
Here are the steps the slide lays out:
- In-depth preference collection
- Accurately measure all traits
- AI evaluates every pair
- Offer only very strong matches
- Feedback refines future matches
It then explains its pricing model
“We earn more, faster, by aligning with users’ incentives,” the slide says.
Its current model, which has humans involved in matchmaking, is free for women and costs men $5,000 per date. For male users, the marriage bounty costs $50,000, and the slide says that Keeper has contracted $14 million “so far.”
Keeper outlines that in a future model, where the tech is fully automated, dates will cost $250, and the marriage bounty contract will cost $5,000.
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post This AI matchmaking startup says it can find your ‘soulmate’ — but be prepared to spend $50,000. Read its pitch deck. appeared first on Business Insider.
