The Airchat audio app probably isn’t worth the hype

There’s a new app in town, according to Wired And Bloomberg, if you think of Silicon Valley as a city. An invitation-only audio app called Airchat is reportedly “hot in tech circles,” with invites making the rounds among the Valley’s top brass.

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The “hype” around AirChat has been amplified by reports from Business Insider and contributor to Forbes, who said you would have had to be “under a rock” to avoid an invite to the app. And it’s no coincidence that Airchat co-founders Naval Ravikant (co-creator of AngelList) and Brian Norgard (former head of product at Tinder) are tech insiders themselves, or investors include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who “threw a check.” , a little blindly,” according to Ravikant.

But the numbers might tell a different story. Both Bloomberg and Business Insider cite data from Sensor Tower that Airchat has been downloaded just over 45,000 times since its launch in mid-2023, including just 30,000 after a relaunch this month. This poor performance could be attributed to the app’s current exclusivity, but Airchat is also losing speed quickly. Bloomberg reported that the app was ranked number 1. 29th in the App Store’s ranking of the best social media apps yesterday. As of publishing today, the app has fallen in the rankings. 42.

If the term “social audio app” rings a bell, you may remember Clubhouse, which rose to fame in 2020 and 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and was valued at $4 billion. But Clubhouse grew in popularity during a lonely era, when most people were sheltering indoors and desperate for human interaction, and last year the app laid off half its staff.

Maybe Airchat can do what Clubhouse couldn’t do. For now, it appears to be another place where tech leads can hear each other speak.