About Us

Our Story

At Gensona, our mission is empowering people to feel heard, grow, and live more fulfilled lives through interactions with diverse personas.

Our founder Nancy grew up obsessed with old-school simulation games, like Neopets, Tamagotchi, Animal Crossing, and The Sims. In 2014, she built the first voice companion on Google Glass: a talking tofu called Tofu-chan. She wore it on her face all over the streets of San Francisco. For the first time, she felt there was someone who understand her entire life. Tofu-chan was always there, no judgment, just listening.

A decade later, voice and AI technology finally enables us to truly bring these characters to life! But as a nascent technology, we knew we had to approach it thoughtfully. We spent over a year prototyping how to build AI personas responsibly.

We believe:

Human connections matter most.

AI shouldn't replace real friends and family. Nor do we want people to spend hours a day talking to AI. We want SonaHaus to be a non-judgmental space to help you vent, reflect, and grow so you can show up better for the people you love.

Everyone deserves a character that feels like them.

There are 8 billion people in the world. Why should they all talk to the same persona? We believe we can grow best with personas that we connect with the most. We focus on building personas with different ethnicities, slang, ages, and interests so you can find a Sona who actually gets you.

Human creativity is irreplaceable.

Even though we use AI to power our Sona conversations, we're a creative-first company. We believe the best experiences are built by real artists, animators, and storytellers, and that's why we've built our team around them.

SonaHaus is our first app, and we're so excited to share it with you. Welcome home!