The social platform plans to win investors' favor with its self-developed AI large model, immersive social scenarios, and strong profitability.
<h4>Key Points:</h4>
<ul>
<li>With the support of internet giant Tencent, the operating entity of Soul App, Soulgate, seeks to obtain a valuation premium in its Hong Kong IPO by leveraging its first-mover advantage in AI.</li>
<li>The platform states that its high-frequency, in-depth user interactions drive the iteration of its AI model, which in turn optimizes user experience and opens up new business opportunities for the company.</li>
</ul>
Yang Ge
ChatGPT focuses on answering various questions in daily life, while Soulgate, which operates the social platform Soul App, believes that their core competitiveness lies in &#34;emotional empowerment&#34;—which is also the essence of their brand name &#34;Soul.&#34; In 2023, as ChatGPT sparked a global AI craze, Soul App launched its self-developed native emotional value large model, Soul X, in December of the same year.
Benefiting from its first-mover advantage in AI technology, Tencent-backed Soul continues to explore commercialization paths based on its core business of &#34;interest-based social networking.&#34; In the social universe built by Soul, users can shed the constraints of their real identities and engage in social interactions through virtual avatars, achieving a deep connection with their &#34;true selves.&#34;
It is reported that the training data for Soul's self-developed large model, Soul X, comes from the massive compliant user interactions accumulated in public social scenarios such as the platform's &#34;Square.&#34; Soul states that this model possesses multimodal perception and real-time interaction capabilities, enabling it to accurately identify, deeply understand, and dynamically respond to user emotions, thereby optimizing the user social experience.
Soul's main revenue comes from consumption scenarios based on emotional needs, such as virtual goods and membership privileges. Notably, Soul has already achieved profitability, which is relatively rare among AI companies today. After all, the self-development and continuous iteration of AI large models require long-term technological investment and resource allocation, which is no easy task.
<h4>When AI Becomes a Ticket to Entry</h4>
Soul is leading the industry wave of deepening AI applications in UGC (user-generated content) platforms, where the massive user content of each platform has also become an important data source for large model manufacturers.
In November of this year, Snapchat (SNAP.US) reached an AI search integration agreement with Perplexity, with Perplexity planning to pay Snapchat $400 million. This indicates that in the current stage of AI commercialization, a large and active user base like Snapchat itself is an asset that can be monetized more quickly.
After withdrawing its application for a U.S. listing in 2021 and letting its Hong Kong application expire in 2022, Soul submitted its Hong Kong IPO application again on November 27 of this year. In this capital market push, the company presents new achievements: over 78.7% of the platform's DAU (daily active users) belong to the core Generation Z demographic, and it has continued to be profitable since 2023—adjusted profits for the first eight months of 2024 and 2025 reached RMB 337 million and RMB 286 million, respectively
The gross profit margin remained stable at 83.7% and 81.5% during the same period; in terms of revenue, it achieved RMB 2.211 billion in 2024, a 19.7% increase from RMB 1.846 billion in 2023, with revenue for the first eight months of 2025 reaching RMB 1.683 billion, a year-on-year increase of 17.8%.
This filing coincides with a hot window period for Hong Kong stock IPOs in recent years. While the vast majority of companies are still following the trend of emphasizing &#34;AI empowering business,&#34; Soul can confidently claim that its deep cultivation in the field of generative AI began long before the current industry craze. Six months before the launch of ChatGPT's first product, Soul had already detailed in its 2022 listing application how AI algorithms assist users in accurately matching like-minded individuals.
&#34;When AI truly integrates into individual relationship networks, it also means that the new productive forces represented by AI will deeply accompany specific scenarios such as companionship, socializing, digital life, and consumption, extending new market opportunities like 'emotional value consumption' and new product paradigms and commercialization models in the social industry,&#34; said Soul's Chief Technology Officer Tao Ming.
This trend has also been confirmed in the latest quarterly results of other tech companies: Kuaishou (1024.HK) achieved revenue growth through AI-driven marketing and video models, while Tencent (0700.HK) boosted marketing service revenue by 21% through AI-optimized ad targeting.
<h4>Model Matrix Continues to Expand</h4>
Soul's original intention is to help users meet like-minded individuals with similar interests and values. Since 2017, the company has independently developed AI recommendation algorithms, continuously optimizing user matching efficiency and social connection quality through precise insights into user behavior.
In 2020, Soul clearly proposed the development direction of &#34;continuously systematically exploring the deep integration of AI and social scenarios.&#34; This long-term investment reached a key milestone in 2023 — the self-developed large language model Soul X was officially launched, marking the company's deep cultivation in AI research and development entering a new stage.
As a core technological engine, Soul X, with its multimodal perception capabilities, can deeply understand users' core preferences, intelligently recommending like-minded friends and a diverse community ecosystem (including content posts, interest groups, voice party rooms, etc.). At the same time, relying on long-term memory and emotional perception technology, the model has achieved scenario-based implementation: in private chat scenarios, &#34;inspiration replies&#34; provide users with precise ice-breaking topics and personalized reply suggestions, lowering social barriers; in content posting scenarios, &#34;AI inspiration&#34; offers users full-process support from content refinement to layout optimization.
In the first eight months of 2025, Soul's daily active users (DAU) were approximately 11 million; in terms of revenue structure, AI-enabled emotional value services have become a core pillar, contributing over 90% of revenue, with income primarily derived from users purchasing virtual avatars, virtual gift props, and recommendation privileges through the platform's social currency &#34;Soul Coins.&#34;
Soul emphasizes that high levels of user social interaction and data accumulation are driving the continuous iteration of AI models and algorithms, giving rise to smarter product applications. The user experience upgrade brought about by technological advancements has also opened up new business opportunities in areas such as advertising and IP, ultimately forming a &#34;user interaction → AI iteration → ecological prosperity → commercial revenue&#34; flywheel effect of &#34;user - AI - platform.&#34;
Soul's AI genes and business model may continue to attract Generation Z users who seek emotional empowerment and help the company seek a new round of valuation premium

22105

Soul App's operating entity Soulgate, with the support of Tencent, plans to achieve a valuation premium in its Hong Kong IPO through an AI-driven emotional social platform. The platform enhances user experience and expands commercial space by relying on self-developed AI large models and immersive social scenarios. The Soul X model optimizes user experience through multimodal perception and real-time interaction, with primary revenue coming from virtual goods and membership privileges. Soul has achieved profitability and has become an industry leader in the deepening of AI applications

BambooWorks

Soul App submits listing application: AI-driven emotional social networking, seizing first-mover advantage