Gen Z dating apps like Ditto ditch swiping in favor of AI matchmaking

🚨 Flash Sale 🚨 Get $100 off your Disrupt 2026 ticket Get $400 off your Disrupt 2026 ticket: REGISTER NOW. Close TechCrunch Desktop Logo TechCrunch Mobile Logo LatestStartupsVentureAppleSecurityAIAppsDisrupt 2026 EventsPodcastsNewsletters SearchSubmit Site Search Toggle Mega Menu Toggle Topics Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture More from TechCrunch Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us Image Credits:Ditto (opens in a new window) Social Gen Z dating apps like Ditto ditch swiping in favor of AI matchmaking Amanda Silberling 8:53 AM PDT · August 6, 2026 This generation of twentysomethings is so disillusioned with swipe-based dating apps that they’ll try literally anything else — even an AI matchmaker. After dropping out of UC Berkeley, Ditto co-founders Allen Wang and Eric Liu set out to build something that would help their peers connect without having to spend hours each week navigating the messiness of apps like Tinder and Hinge.

Then an AI chatbot introduces itself as Ditto, “a dating initiative built by college students who get it … no swiping, no awkward DMs, just real dates every Wednesday at 7 pm.” Image Credits:Ditto (opens in a new window) Users text their way through an onboarding process, starting with basic biographical information like their name, gender, and birth date. Then Ditto gets into more specific questions to understand someone’s personality, interests, and dating preferences. Some users even upload photos of their celebrity crushes to give the AI a sense of their type.

The Ditto algorithm tries to match people not based on similar hobbies and interests, but rather what those hobbies and interests say about who someone is. We’ll collect more feedback about the date, and then improve our understanding of the user, and send them to a better next date,” Wang said. With any dating app, and especially one that minimizes the time between matching and going out, it can be hard to discern the safety of a situation — is the person you’re meeting really who they say they are?

For now, while Ditto is only available at a few dozen colleges, there’s a built-in vetting process in which you know that someone is a student at your university with a .edu email. Ditto is focused on figuring out how to grow to more schools — and eventually beyond just college — while scaling safely. Even for the most established and well-funded dating apps, this is a challenging endeavor.

But Ditto does have $9.2 million in seed funding to work with from investors like Gradient, Peak XV, and Scribble. Wang said, “99% of the investors just reached out to us through inbound, because we were pretty big on LinkedIn and Twitter for a bit. Even Duolingo’s co-founder Severin [Hacker] reached out to me saying, ‘Hey, love your mission, I really like what you do, let’s hop on a call.’” Ditto has been able to establish this notoriety through its irreverent marketing, like videos of robot stunts.

Now based in San Francisco, Ditto has 12 full-time employees, but they’re also hiring a “chief yacht officer” to throw promotional parties (yes, this is a legitimate job listing). This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Amanda Silberling Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture.