Tolan

Tolan is Portola’s AI companion app, pairing voice conversation with an animated alien that responds to touch and remembers its relationship with the user. Available for iPhone, it lets people discuss interests, relationships and goals, share photos and design a virtual planet. Its purpose is to help users navigate everyday overwhelm while encouraging connections with people in their lives. Characters gradually share their own interests and experiences, with that progression deliberately tuned to model healthy attachment.

Portola’s founders are Quinten Farmer, its CEO, Evan Goldschmidt, its CTO, and Ajay Mehta, its president. Tolan soft-launched in 2024, combining underlying AI models with systems for listening, responding and remembering. Its character-design work chose nonhuman aliens to support friendly interaction without inviting romantic roleplay. The initial animation system used a state machine to coordinate authored keyframes and procedural movements: this gave characters an expressive presence across conversations while native model processing of emotion and tone could not yet reliably drive animation.

The company’s website reports more than 100,000 subscribers and over two million hours spent with its guides. Portola offers paid features and recurring subscriptions. Its product blends reflection with practical help, such as organizing a day or discussing homework, while its service terms classify the experience as informational and recreational rather than professional healthcare or counseling.