Solace

Solace

Founding Engineer · 2025

Solace is an AI wellness companion started by UC Berkeley students. It won the first Virtuals Protocol hackathon in April 2025 and joined Free Ventures, Berkeley's student accelerator. That October I joined as its founding engineer while I was still in high school.

Solace's wellness dashboard and character on two iPhones
Solace's App Store screens: its character, emotion insights, conversation practice and scenarios

The app came first. It runs on React Native, Supabase and Fly.io, and it has been on the App Store since 13 November 2025, where it is rated 5.0. Most of the engineering went into voice latency: turn detection, speech to text, the model's first words and text to speech, and we kept that chain under about a second. Solace also holds an ElevenLabs Startup Grant of 33 million credits.

Seed's launch graphics: an emotionally intelligent AI companion, support that doesn't clock out, never talking into the void

Seed came next. It is a pocket companion with a 240 by 240 OLED face and a 3W speaker, and it has been on presale for $60 since September 2025.

Solace Seed from the front and the back: OLED face, side rocker, speaker grille and USB-C
Seed's user manual, designed by Sarah Mou: the cover, the product overview and the setup steps

I worked closely with Solace's design team to implement their wireframes. Sarah Mou on the team designed this user manual for Seed.

Seed boards with their OLED faces attached, trayed for assembly at Eastcolight
A carton of Seeds, boxed and ready to ship

In May 2026 Eastcolight, a Hong Kong toy manufacturer, put the first 700-unit batch through assembly.

A customer's Solace Seed, unboxed

The first Seeds shipped at the end of May, to customers who preordered in Asia.