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How much would you bet on a company that promises its AI can find your soulmate? Keeper, an AI matchmaking startup, is wagering $50,000 it can do it—and it's already collected on a few of these "marriage bounties."
Keeper and a slew of other startups are bringing AI to a long-running quest: using technology to find love. Match.com brought the relationship search online. Tawkify tried to make traditional matchmaking into a VC-scalable business. Tinder and Bumble made dating accessible with a swipe.
"Tinder digitized the bar," said Jake Kozloski, Keeper's founder and CEO. "We're digitizing something that's been around in many cultures for hundreds of years: matchmaking."
I'm Jacob Robbins, and this is the Weekend Pitch. You can reach me at jacob.robbins@pitchbook.com or on X @JacobERobbins.
The terms of Keeper's marriage bounty are simple: you agree to pay $50,000 if its AI finds your "forever" person. You can deduct $5,000 from that bounty for each date chosen by its AI, giving Keeper an incentive to find your match quickly.
If it's kismet, which Keeper defines not just as getting married, but alternatively by living with each other for over a year, having children together or staying together for over 18 months, you pay the remainder of the bounty.
VCs are taking an interest in this new cohort. Keeper raised a $4 million pre-seed round in December. Ditto, an AI matchmaking startup for college students, raised $9.2 million in February. And Known, a startup using voice AI to match singles, raised $9.7 million, also in December.
But the business of online dating is tough. |
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The organic baby food company Once Upon a Farm went public recently, popping 18% during its first day of trading. Its debut defies a broader slowdown in the consumer market and is also another example of the increasing success celebrities are having leveraging their stardom into consumer businesses. Which “13 Going on 30” star is the co-founder and chief brand officer of Once Upon a Farm?
A) Wyona Ryder
B) Jennifer Aniston
C) Brie Larson
D) Jennifer Garner
Find your answer at the bottom of The Weekend Pitch! |
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A selection from our most-read articles of the past few days.
- Anthropic and OpenAI faced off in a Super Bowl of ad battles ahead of their plans for public listings. Read more
- A leading astrophysicist has some questions for Elon Musk about his dream of data centers in space. Is it just pie in the sky? Full coverage
- Is AI’s threat to software overblown? PitchBook analysts weigh in. Read the analysis
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“We don’t have yellow flags. We actually have largely green flags.”
—-Blue Owl co-CEO Marc Lipschultz on an earnings call defending the firm’s investments in software amid the largest AI-driven sell-off the market has seen yet. PitchBook’s Jessica Hamlin spoke to investors on what the SaaS tumult means for managers, their portfolios and the greater PE ecosystem. Read the story |
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Keep an eye out for these insights and research reports coming out this week:
- 2025 Annual European VC Valuations & Returns Report
- 2026 Global Fund Performance Report (as of Q2 2025)
- Q4 2025 Enterprise SaaS VC Trends
- Q4 2025 Medtech VC Trends
- Q4 2025 Aerospace & Defense Report
- Q4 2025 Consumer Retail & Services Report
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| (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images) |
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Answer: D.
Jennifer Garner co-founded Once Upon a Farm in 2017 and has starred in "13 Going on 30" and "Alias." Rosie Bradbury examined the baby food company’s IPO and how other celebrity-run companies have fared in her latest. |
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This edition of The Weekend Pitch was written by Jacob Robbins. It was edited by Kia Kokalitcheva.
Were you forwarded The Weekend Pitch? Sign up at pitchbook.com/subscribe. |
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