Originally published in Relevant
When Adi Agrawal started building Creed last August, he had a problem to solve that most Silicon Valley investors didn’t think was real. The fastest-growing companies in consumer AI are platforms like Character AI, Replica and Janitor AI — AI companions where people, mostly Gen Z and Gen Alpha, spend hours roleplaying with AI boyfriends and girlfriends.
“About 60% of Gen Z and Gen Alpha are using AI companions on a regular basis,” Agrawal says. “And the majority tend to be these weird, sexualized AI companions. Nobody talks about them, but they’re growing like crazy.”
Agrawal’s answer? Build a companion with values. An AI friend that actively tries to get you closer to God, your Bible and your local church community. Six months later, Creed is the product of that vision — part spiritual companion, part accountability app, part church matchmaker. And it’s funded by Andreessen Horowitz, with Jake Paul’s VC fund along for the ride.
The timing plays into a broader cultural shift. While Christianity has been declining across the U.S. and Western world for three decades, something changed post-COVID-19. There’s a resurgence happening, particularly among younger people — what Agrawal calls the “Jesus curious.” Many have never stepped foot in a sanctuary, but they’re encountering faith content on TikTok, wrestling with big questions and trying to figure out what belief might look like for them.
“The majority of Christians in the country don’t actually go to church,” Agrawal explains. “It’s a lot of people rediscovering faith, but they don’t have a church community. They don’t have a blueprint for how to read the Bible, select a church or live out the word of God in their day-to-day life.”
Creed is designed to fill that gap. The app functions differently than ChatGPT. It’s voice-first, has personality and remembers you. You tell it you had a fight with your best friend, and it’ll pray for you, offer Bible verses, then follow up two days later asking how you’re feeling. It might even send you a YouTube sermon. The focus is relationship building over time.
Training an AI to handle theology requires careful oversight. Agrawal and his co-founders are tech builders, so they assembled a theological advisory board — founding pastors, Ph.D. holders, builders of early AI Christianity indexes. Together, they developed a rubric of 100 key questions the AI gets stress-tested against. Who was Jesus? Did he rise from the dead? Questions that cut across denominations and show up repeatedly in Google searches.
The AI’s foundation comes from models like Gemini and ChatGPT, with layers of fine-tuning on top. Users select their denomination during onboarding — Southern Baptist, Catholic, Methodist — and the companion adjusts its answers accordingly. For partner churches in Creed’s network, the AI even references specific sermons from that congregation, creating a feedback loop between Sunday morning and your phone screen.
“We want to get you as accurately fine-tuned as possible,” Agrawal says. “It filters down from broader Christianity to denominations to your church.”
If you’re new to faith and don’t have a denomination yet, the app presents a balanced overview of different traditions. Some questions, Agrawal admits, need a human. If someone is dealing with suicidal ideation or severe trauma, Creed will route them to a crisis hotline or suggest connecting with a local pastor. The app can help you find churches nearby and even facilitate introductions.
“The whole goal is to funnel you to an actual church community,” he says. “We’re not here to replace pastors.”
Over the past six months, Creed has evolved beyond conversation. The app now tracks prayer streaks, offers Bible reading plans, lets users set daily reminders for scripture and even suggests volunteering opportunities. It’s shifted toward building spiritual habits.
“We don’t just want you to chat with the companion,” Agrawal says. “We want you to read the Bible, contextualise it in your life and pray. So we added those features as well.”
The shift makes sense. An AI companion can be endlessly patient, always available, never judgmental. But faith traditions have always emphasized discipline, rhythm and community — things that can’t be fully mediated through a screen. Creed positions itself as a bridge.
When Agrawal pitched investors, many dismissed the idea outright. Religion wasn’t a “real sector” to build a business in, they said. The numbers tell a different story. Sixty-five percent of the U.S. identifies as Christian. Creed’s biggest user base is in Texas, with strong adoption across the Midwest and South — regions coastal investors tend to overlook.
“When you live on the coast, you don’t really think of religion as a real thing,” Agrawal says. “But especially in times of uncertainty — job displacement, political volatility — people need a set of principles and values to align with. People on the coast are always undermining how big that need is.”
The app is globally available and currently supports English, Spanish and Portuguese, with French and Korean on the way. Most users discover it through viral TikToks, which Creed’s team posts daily. The flywheel is straightforward: make content, go viral, funnel users into the app, refine based on usage.
Creed is attempting to redirect the AI companion wave. If millions of young people are already pouring hours into relationships with artificial intelligence, why not build companions that point toward something beyond the screen?
Whether that works is still unclear. Six months is early. But the usage stats suggest people want this — or at least want to try it. Agrawal’s team pushes updates daily, refining the theology, adjusting the personality, watching what resonates. The app has gone viral multiple times on TikTok. Churches are signing on as partners. Users are setting prayer streaks.
The question isn’t whether AI companions are coming. They’re already here, embedded in millions of phones, keeping people company for hours a day. The question is what they’re for. Creed’s bet is that they can be for more than just filling time — that they can actually push people toward something real.
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