Hinge founder's new AI matchmaker Overtone raises $18 million to replace dating app swiping

Overtone: Hinge founder's AI matchmaker coming later this year

Yesterday, Hinge founder Justin McLeod shared more details about his next venture, an AI matchmaking service called Overtone. McLeod announced his departure from Hinge back in Dec. 2025 to focus on Overtone, which he plans to launch later this year in select locations. (You can put yourself on the waitlist if you're interested.) "Overtone is not a dating app," McLeod wrote in the latest blog post. "By that I mean it's not a social platform with profiles that reduce people to stats, quotes and photos. There are no opaque, algorithmic feeds trained on split-second impulses. And there's no juggling likes, matches and chats across many people at once." Rather, the post goes on, Overtone is a service. McLeod promises Overtone will make only introductions "worth making" and will explain why someone is a match. He wants to bring back matchmaking, a longtime practice. These days, it's pretty limited to those who can spend thousands of dollars on a personal matchmaker, like in the movie Materialists. "But this time with the reach and diversity of modern networks, the collective wisdom of relationship science, and the conviction that when it comes to options, all you need is less™," he wrote (yes, including the trademark). Details of what Overtone will look like are scarce, but McLeod also announced the company has raised $18 million from FirstMark Capital, Pace Capital, and Match Group. The latter is the dating app conglomerate that owns Hinge. Additionally, Match Group and Tinder CEO Spencer Rascoff has joined the board, as have executive leadership adviser and founder of The Signal Institute, Diana Chapman, and famed relationship psychotherapist Esther Perel (who partnered with Hinge last year). Overtone will come at a time when some daters are skeptical about using AI to find them a match. When Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd announced earlier this year that Bumble is killing the swipe and ushering in an AI matchmaker, the reaction online was largely negative. But there are budding AI matchmakers out there, such as Sitch Matchmaking and Ditto AI.

AI-Pilled Tech CEO Convinced He Has the Perfect Solution for Online Dating, Announces Harebrained App Idea

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Look, dating in the 2020s sucks. The apps are bad, people are rude, and the etiquette of it all seems to be evolving at the speed of sound. Yet for all the downsides, there's nothing that can't be made 100 times worse with the addition of AI slop. For better or worse, that's exactly what Hinge founder Justin McLeod has in mind for his latest dating app, "Overtone." First spotted by TechCrunch, McLeod announced an $18 million round of funding on the company's blog. While that's a hefty chunk of change for any startup, confidence from venture capitalists isn't exactly shocking considering the founder's previous success. What really stands out about the blog, though, is that McLeod used the bulletin to vague-post about his grand vision for a new, AI-integrated dating app. "Think about the most un-human parts of the dating app experience," McLeod challenged: "writing personal ads for ourselves, judging each other in a split second based on photos, sorting through thousands of potential partners, and wrangling them through the precarious funnel of like to match to chat to date." "None of those steps exist because anyone wanted them," McLeod's pitch continues. "They exist because they were the best the technology could do." Like many, many startup founders before him, McLeod asserts that Overtone is "not a dating app," but something different -- in this case, a "service." That may be a distinction without a difference, but it signals a sloppified shift in the founder's approach. While details remain scarce, we do know that Overtone is meant to be a "a voice- and audio-forward service, enabled by AI, that provides highly curated introductions." What that means in practice is difficult to say. Will the app be manipulating voice messages meant for potential lovers? Does it connect people based on the information they give, or on the information generated by AI? In his blog, McLeod provides few concrete clues as to what Overtone might encompass, though the app he envisions isn't exactly inspiring. "We get to know each person deeply, learning about them in their own voice, hearing their own unique story," McLeod writes. "And we make only the introductions that are worth making, grounded in relationship science and thoughtful reflection. We transparently explain why we believe someone is a great match. And we leave it up to our daters to meet in person and discover chemistry, with guidance along the way." So, if you ever saw some AI-generated fruit slop and thought, "how can I integrate this into my dating life?" Overtone might be just the app for you.

The Hinge founder's new dating app lets AI be your matchmaker. There's already a waitlist

Nearly 15 years ago, Justin McLeod founded Hinge, now known as "the dating app designed to be deleted." Hinge stands out in the dating app landscape for prioritizing long-term connections over superficial snap decisions -- but ultimately, it still relies on users responding to others' prompts to show interest in potential matches. McLeod is setting out to change that. Not with an update to Hinge, but with an entirely new take on the dating app industry. In December of last year, he left Hinge to start a new AI-infused matchmaking company called Overtone. This week, he announced that he's raised $18 million to support its launch later this year. A new paradigm in dating As of its latest seed round, Overtone has raised $18 million from investors including FirstMark Capital, Pace Capital, and Match Group, which already owns dating apps including Tinder, OkCupid, and -- yes -- Hinge. In a blog post accompanying the funding announcement, McLeod wrote that Overtone "is not a dating app" but a modern take on traditional matchmaking services.

Hinge Founder's New $18-Million AI Matchmaker Is Already Drawing 'Black Mirror' Comparisons

Last year, Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod announced that he would step down from his role to independently build Overtone, a modern AI-enabled matchmaking company. Now, Overtone is one step closer to reaching users' fingertips. It announced a $18 million seed round yesterday. The investor round includes some big players like Match Group -- the parent company behind global dating brands like Hinge, Tinder, and OKCupid -- FirstMark Capital, a venture capital firm known for early investments in Pinterest, Shopify, Airbnb, and DraftKings, and Pace Capital, a pre-consensus investment firm. Overtone bills itself as a "a voice-and audio-forward matchmaking service, enabled by AI and grounded in relationship science, that provides highly curated introductions," according to a press release.

Hinge Founder Raises $18M for AI Matchmaking App Without Swiping

Hinge founder Justin McLeod has raised $18 million for Overtone, an AI-powered matchmaking platform that replaces profiles and swiping with voice conversations to create more meaningful introductions and improve compatibility. The next phase of online dating may not involve creating a profile or endlessly swiping through potential matches. Overtone, a new AI-powered matchmaking platform, has raised $18 million in seed funding to build a service that focuses on meaningful introductions rather than the mechanics of traditional dating apps. Founded by Hinge creator Justin McLeod, the startup is backed by Match Group, FirstMark Capital, and Pace Capital. Unlike conventional , Overtone positions itself as a matchmaking service. On this platform, users typically don't upload public profiles, and they don't really go browsing through hundreds of possible matches. Rather, the system depends on voice-based conversations to get a feel for their personality, interests, and even how they see relationship preferences working out, before it starts suggesting introductions.