What Hallway does

Hallway is an AI-powered character and voice bot platform that enables businesses to create and deploy interactive mascot hosts for their digital products. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Columbia, United States, the company operates with a team of 1-10 employees and targets gaming companies (Neopets, TerraZero, Kigu), technology startups (Pointhound, CHKK, Basis Set), and Web3 brands (Azuki). The platform positions itself as a self-serve alternative to custom AI development, allowing customers to launch character mascots that guide users, answer questions, capture leads, and boost site engagement without writing code.

The platform's technical foundation is an LLM-neutral orchestration layer supporting Gemini, Claude, GPT, or custom model implementations. Hallway layers proprietary features on top of these foundation models, including a Safety Shield trained to detect and handle inappropriate content, Smart Memory for personalized cross-session interactions, a Knowledge Base for retrieval-augmented responses, and low-latency voice handling for real-time speech. Deployment is via a simple script-based Plugin optimized for web and mobile. The platform spans three AI modalities — text, audio (Voice Bots), and image (rendered character visuals in classic, anime, and game styles) — and offers pre-built character archetypes as well as custom character creation.

Hallway operates a product-led, self-serve distribution model through its website (hallway.ai) and generates revenue through subscription-based access to the platform; pricing is not publicly disclosed. Its customer segmentation is horizontal, spanning four named use cases: Teach (education), Train (employee onboarding and development), Discover (e-commerce product discovery and lead capture), and Promote (brand awareness and thought leadership). The company received founding-stage backing from Sequoia Capital in December 2022 and distributes globally through its web-based self-serve tool.

Name

Hallway

Legal name

thehallway, inc.

Website

https://joinhallway.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2022

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Hallway is an AI platform enabling businesses to create and deploy interactive character mascots for websites and products, serving gaming, e-commerce, education, training, and brand-engagement use cases through a self-serve subscription tool.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Columbia

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. AI Mascot/Voice Bot Platform: Hallway generates revenue through its AI character creation platform, allowing companies to add mascot hosts to their products for customer engagement, lead capture, and user guidance. The platform offers tools to create characters with various styles and voices, tune personality and speech, and deploy via simple script integration.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels2 records

Core offering

Hallway provides a self-serve AI platform that enables businesses to create, customize, and deploy branded mascot characters and voice bots on their websites and products in minutes, without coding. Characters are configurable in style, voice, personality, and speech, and are backed by a Knowledge Base for contextual responses, a Safety Shield for content moderation, Smart Memory for personalization, and an LLM-neutral architecture supporting Gemini, Claude, GPT, or custom models.

Product overview

Hallway is an AI-powered platform that enables companies to create character mascots/hosts for their products in minutes. The core Hallway Platform allows users to select character styles and voices, tune personality and speech patterns, build a Knowledge Base for contextual responses, and deploy via a simple Plugin script for web and mobile. The platform offers Voice Bot capabilities for audio interactions alongside text-based conversations. Users can choose from various pre-built character styles (classic, anime, game characters) or request custom characters, with notable customers including Neopets, Pointhound, CHKK, TerraZero, and Basis Set.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Hallway Platform Self-serve AI-powered platform for creating and deploying branded character mascots and voice bots on websites and products, enabling use cases such as lead capture, site engagement, 24/7 support, employee training, and brand promotion. Characters can be configured in style, voice, personality, and speech, and are powered by an LLM-neutral stack (Gemini, Claude, GPT, or custom) with Safety Shield, Smart Memory, and Knowledge Base capabilities.

Named customers7 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability7 records

Feature5 records

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Emerging players

• Tavus: Personalized AI video platform with conversational digital twin capabilities. Comparable in AI-driven avatar concept and targeting of sales/marketing workflows, though focused on video rather than embedded web mascots.
• D-ID: AI-powered talking avatar and digital human technology used for interactive video experiences. Adjacent offering that overlaps with Hallway's visual character and voice capabilities, particularly for brand and enterprise use cases.

Broad incumbents

• Synthesia: AI video avatar platform for enterprise content creation (training, marketing, comms). Comparable in AI-driven avatar/mascot concept, though Synthesia specializes in video rather than interactive conversation.
• Soul Machines: Enterprise-focused digital human platform combining AI with CGI avatars. Comparable AI avatar offering aimed at customer engagement and brand experiences, but with a broader, more enterprise-leaning portfolio.
• HeyGen: AI video generation platform with avatar/character capabilities used for marketing and training content. Overlaps with Hallway on brand-engagement use cases but focused on video output rather than real-time interactive mascots.
• Intercom: Established customer messaging platform with AI chatbot/agent capabilities (Fin AI). Competes with Hallway in the conversational customer engagement and lead-capture category, but as part of a much broader customer support suite.

Direct peers

• Character.AI: Consumer-focused platform for creating and conversing with AI characters. Highly comparable to Hallway in core character-creation technology, though Character.AI targets end-consumers while Hallway focuses on business use cases.
• Replika: AI companion app centered on personalized character chat. Comparable in conversational character technology, though Replika skews consumer/companionship while Hallway targets brand and product engagement.
• Convai: Conversational AI character platform for games, virtual worlds, and XR experiences. Directly competes with Hallway in enabling interactive AI NPCs and brand mascots via easy integration.
• Inworld AI: Provides AI characters with personality, memory, and conversational ability for games and virtual worlds. Closely aligned with Hallway's gaming and interactive use cases and overlapping enterprise customer base.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/join_hallway
• Facebookfacebook.com/hallwaytile
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/joinhallway

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors2 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Hallway