Hinge founder raises $18 million for AI matchmaker that replaces swiping with voice conversations

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.

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.