Every Wednesday at 7 p.m., a text lands in the phones of thousands of college students: a match, plus a fully planned itinerary for a date. There's no swiping, no browsing profiles, no small talk with a stranger's carefully curated photo grid. Just an AI chatbot doing the matchmaking and a night already booked.
That's the pitch behind Ditto, a Bay Area startup built for college students that says it has already generated more than 80,000 dates, according to cofounder Allen Wang, as reported by CBS News. The company uses an AI chatbot to learn what users are looking for and handle the matchmaking itself, eliminating the swiping mechanic that has defined dating apps for over a decade.
One of those matches paired Owen Krause, a 22-year-old Oregon State University student interning in San Francisco, with Angella Ferrer. The two met in Japantown on a Friday evening, and Krause rated the date better than he expected. Ferrer told CBS News she liked that Krause was shy, while Krause said the traditional swiping system on other apps feels like a race or competition rather than a way to actually meet someone.
How the Matchmaking Actually Works
Ditto skips the app-download step entirely. Instead of requiring a standalone mobile app or endless profile browsing, the service operates through SMS and iMessage conversations with the chatbot, according to Business Insider. Users receive a poster showing photos and the logic behind the match before they accept a scheduled date, a structure meant to remove the friction and decision fatigue that critics of swipe-based apps often cite.
Wang has said Ditto's aim is to push people toward human connection faster, rather than keeping them scrolling. The service is currently free for students, though the company plans to eventually charge a subscription fee once it builds out its user base further.
From a Dorm-Room Prototype to a National Platform
Ditto was founded in 2024 by Wang and Eric Liu, who both dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley, to build what they saw as a fix for high-friction, ineffective dating app mechanics, according to the entity background reported by Mashable. The founders reportedly built an early prototype simply to help a college roommate find a date before graduation.
The idea has scaled quickly. Ditto launched at UC San Diego in early 2025 and expanded across West Coast and national campuses, growing from roughly 42,000 registered users in February to over 151,000 by May, per Wikipedia's entry on the service. That trajectory has since climbed further: Wang now says the platform has more than 160,000 student sign-ups.
The growth caught the attention of venture capital early this year. Ditto announced a $9.2 million seed funding round in February led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from Google's Gradient Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and Llama Ventures, bringing its total funding to $9.5 million, Business Insider reported. The company said the funding was earmarked for engineering hires in AI and for campus growth marketing.
Yacht Parties and Campus Meetups
Beyond the texting-based matches, Ditto has leaned into offline events to build its brand among Gen Z students. The startup hosts on-campus events, runs local activity clubs in San Francisco, and has posted a job listing for a Chief Yacht Officer to organize blind-date yacht parties across ten U.S. cities, according to Mashable's reporting on the company's local presence. Ditto began testing yacht party events in San Francisco in October 2025.
A Wider Industry Bet Against Swiping
Ditto isn't operating in a vacuum. Hinge founder Justin McLeod raised $18 million in July for a new AI and audio-based matchmaking venture called Overtone, joining startups like Sitch, Amata, and Keeper in trying to replace swipe feeds with AI curation, as reported by Inc. Magazine. Overtone leans on voice interactions and AI curation rather than traditional profile cards.
The shift comes as traditional swipe-based platforms face steep subscriber losses. Match Group has recorded eight consecutive quarters of paying-user declines at Tinder, while Bumble reported a 16% year-over-year drop in paying subscribers, according to a PR Newswire release. Tinder match rates for male users have reportedly dropped to roughly 0.6%.
A mid-2025 Forbes Health survey found that 78% of active dating app users experience burnout, with Gen Z reporting the highest levels of exhaustion tied to repetitive conversations and decision overload; survey respondents spent an average of nearly 51 minutes per day on dating apps. Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff said in August that nearly half of singles aged 18 to 29 now prefer shared in-person experiences over swiping, a shift that has led Tinder to expand its in-person group events feature to 26 cities, according to CNET. Tinder's pilot event program in Los Angeles reportedly saw a 53% repeat attendance rate.
The broader demographic backdrop is stark. A Pew Research Center study found that 57% of single adults aged 18 to 29 were not actively looking for romantic relationships or casual dates, the highest single-and-not-looking rate on record for young adults, with 56% of Gen Z respondents saying dating is harder today than for past generations. For students like Krause and Ferrer, at least, a Wednesday-night text with a plan already attached seems to be cutting through some of that fatigue.
