AI is coming for collectibles next

AI toys, companions, and robots have been everywhere at CES this year, but among the horde of waddling plushies and light-up emoji eyes, two stood out to me. HeyMates and Buddyo are each betting that the collectible figurine boom is going to come back with an AI-powered vengeance, letting us chat to sports stars and superheroes from our desks.

The core concept to both is this: Take a cutesy figurine and stick it onto a smart base with a speaker, microphone, and maybe a flashing ring of light or two. Then use an accompanying app to power a basic LLM chatbot based on the figurine, so you can talk to Albert Einstein about relativity, or Darth Vader about crushing dissident forces, with some fun wake words and a cheesy joke or two.

Beyond that, the two startups I met this week differ. Olli is the more established of the two. It already provides its AI-driven BuddyOS to a number of other toy companies, but it now wants to build its own devices. With that in mind, it’s launching HeyMates, Funko-esque figurines with RFID chips in their bases, which become interactive AI characters when placed on the accompanying stand.

Olli intends to launch HeyMates on Kickstarter later this year, starting with three figurines: Einstein, who chats about science and creativity; Zara, a tarot reader who gives advice with a hint of mysticism; and Chandler, a bold choice of name for a toy who “brings the dry, sarcastic charm of a ’90s sitcom character,” given the 2023 death of Friends star Matthew Perry.

The company wants to build its own toys for the sake of creative control, and to get ahead of what CEO Hai Ta predicts is a market about to boom, with imitators and rivals likely on the way. He sees a future involving licensed characters and celebrity likenesses, along with Olli’s own line of HeyMates IP. In short, he wants to build the next Funko Pops, but make it AI.

Yijia Zhang, CEO of Buddyo, sees things differently. He doesn’t want to replace Funko Pops, but build a platform that might sit alongside them. In fact, it’s not even Funko Pops he really has in mind, but Nintendo’s Amiibo. Zhang describes himself as a Nintendo “superfan,” and Buddyo is his effort to get more out of his own Amiibo collection.

Instead of selling figurines, Buddyo is launching a stand it calls an AI Pod, with a slot the exact size of a standard Amiibo base. The Pod uses the same NFC tech as Nintendo’s figurines to recognize specific characters, and Buddyo will also sell its own NFC-equipped bases onto which you can place Funko Pops, bobbleheads, and (of course) Labubus, with plans for a larger Pod down the line capable of supporting bigger figures.

Since existing figurines don’t come with chatbot personalities baked in, Buddyo has developed an app to create a character for each figurine. Take a photo and give the character a name, and the app’s AI will analyze it, pulling up a backstory and personality. It’s capable of recognizing existing IP, so it knew that Stitch was a cartoon alien, and that Mario is a plumber with a questionable Italian accent who loves to say “It’s-a-me!” And it does deliver that exact accent, letting you pick the voice from a library of different sounds including sound samples matching copyrighted characters. Zhang is quick to emphasize these are all provided by the community, not the company, a loophole he clearly hopes will keep the infamously litigious Nintendo at bay.

Zhang’s background is in AI — he was once a software engineer at Google, working on Google Assistant, and currently heads up an AI and platforms team at Plaud. Perhaps that explains his focus on building an AI platform and base, rather than designing new toys from scratch. But he says it’s also about taking advantage of the fact that people already have a “deep connection” with their collections, which would be missing from new toys or new IP.

Once they’re up and running, HeyMates and Buddyo feel similar. Both emphasize fun, lighthearted chitchat with the AI avatars — “tell me a joke” remains everyone’s favorite demo question — though Zhang says Buddyo’s hybrid ChatGPT / Gemini AI stack can be used as a full AI assistant, just with a little more character. That’s not an option with HeyMates, which are each designed to do one thing well, with plans down the line for specific figurines to chat about movies, or cooking, or K-pop.

It’s still an open question whether there’s a meaningful market for AI toys and chatbot companions, but combining the tech with collectibles is the most convincing case I’ve seen yet.

Neither HeyMates nor Buddyo has any involvement from Funko, which has its own problems to deal with — just two months ago it warned investors that there was “substantial doubt” over its ability to continue operating, as sales slow and tariffs bite. Will we see a desperate Funko turn to AI for its salvation, or will its inaction provide the opening for a new company to take over the space? Either way, it’s clear chatty collectibles are coming — and soon.

Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge