Pophie brings emotionally intelligent AI companionship to life with Agora’s real-time conversational AI

AI Companion / Conversational AI / Consumer AI Devices / AIoT

Problem

Creating an AI companion that feels genuinely present, emotionally engaging, and always available

Solution

Agora IoT SDK powers natural voice interactions, seamless turn-taking, and synchronized voice-motion experiences

Results

523 backers and US$170,880 raised in the first 12 hours of Kickstarter

185 average daily interactions per active user

12+ hours average daily online presence through Pophie’s “Always-On” companion experience

About Pophie

Creating lifelike interactions with emotional AI

Pophie is an emotional AI companion robot developed by Singapore-based InsBotics to bring warmth, intelligence, and real-time interaction to everyday life. Unlike traditional smart devices that simply respond to commands, Pophie proactively understands and engages users through multimodal AI, expressive robotics, and conversational intelligence.

With expressive movements, a signature breathing light, and a plush-inspired design, Pophie creates a strong sense of emotional presence and connection. Powered by contextual memory, emotional modeling, voiceprint and facial recognition, and natural multi-user voice interaction, it can see, hear, understand, remember, and interact with users in real time.

Since its launch, Pophie has earned international recognition, including a CES 2026 TWICE Picks Award, and attracted 523 backers while raising US$170,880 on Kickstarter within its first 12 hours.

The Problem

Building emotionally responsive AI conversations that feel truly alive

For Pophie, real-time communication was not simply a feature — it was the foundation of the entire product experience. The team needed conversations to feel emotionally natural, interruption-friendly, responsive, and human-like across real-world environments.

Traditional voice architectures struggled to deliver the responsiveness, synchronization, and stability required for emotionally engaging interactions at scale, especially across multimodal AI systems combining voice, vision, and robotic movement.

Key Challenges

Achieving ultra-low-latency, human-like conversations

Synchronizing voice, emotion, and movement in real time

Maintaining stable conversational performance across global and low-bandwidth environments

The Solution

Real-time infrastructure for next-generation AI companions

Pophie selected Agora IoT SDK to power the conversational layer behind its companion experience. Using Agora’s conversational AI and real-time engagement infrastructure, the team built responsive, full-duplex voice interactions that support natural interruptions and emotionally expressive conversations in real time.

Agora provided low-latency global infrastructure that improved response speed, interruption handling, and synchronization between voice, emotion, and device actions. This allowed InsBotics to focus on building personality, memory, and proactive interaction experiences.

Agora Products

IoT SDK IoT SDK

Why Pophie chose Agora:

Ultra-low-latency conversational AI enabled natural, interruption-friendly interaction

Real-time speech recognition and synchronized voice-motion interaction enhanced emotional responsiveness

Stable global real-time infrastructure accelerated deployment across AI-native devices

Results and ROI

Driving deeper engagement and long-term AI companionship

With Agora powering its conversational AI experiences, Pophie delivered highly responsive and emotionally engaging real-time interactions that differentiated the product from traditional assistants and companion robots.

The platform enabled fluid multi-person conversations, faster responses, and natural interruption handling, creating interactions that felt significantly more human and immersive. Users reported that conversations felt more natural and emotionally responsive, making Pophie feel more “alive” and companion-like in everyday life.

Results after implementing Agora:

523 backers and US$170,880 raised within the first 12 hours of Kickstarter launch

185 average daily interactions per active user

12+ hours average daily online presence through Pophie’s “Always-On” companion experience

TEN

App Builder

Flexible Classroom