Crushie AI Earned $8.8 Million in Six Months, Reaching Global AI App Revenue Top Four

Summary

Crushie AI, an AI emotional-companion app attributed in the article to a mainland Chinese overseas team, earned $8.8 million in first-half 2026 revenue before app-store commissions, placing fourth in Appfigures’ global AI companion and chat-app ranking. The ranking covered about 214 NSFW and romantic-companion apps launched since ChatGPT’s release, which together generated $427.3 million in consumer spending; romantic and NSFW apps accounted for nearly half of first-half category revenue despite having roughly half the downloads of non-NSFW companions. Crushie AI focuses on female users with customizable AI-boyfriend characters, including personality, background and memory settings. Its conversations can retain important user details, show character emotions and affection levels, and use narration, action commands, typography and scene information to create an interactive romance-game experience. By August 2026, the app had more than 500,000 Google Play downloads, 345,000 monthly active users and an estimated monthly ARPU of about RMB30, the highest among the five leading apps cited. It charges $29.99 per month and sells virtual-gem packages priced from $2.49 to $99.99, above the cited subscription prices of Character.AI and Replika. The app launched in February 2025 and had reached version 2.2.1 after 44 updates. User feedback praised natural, emotionally rich conversations but cited memory problems and unclear remaining-credit information as weaknesses.