Hyperbond Studio Partners With MiniMax to Power AI Companions on Call Me Sensei
SINGAPORE, 4 February 2026 – Hyperbond Studio, creator of the language-learning dating simulator app Call Me Sensei, today announced a partnership with MiniMax Group Inc. (0100.HK), one of Asia's largest AI companies. MiniMax's text-to-speech (TTS) technology now powers the voices of all AI companions in Call Me Sensei, enabling conversations that sound and feel strikingly real.
Learning Through Connection
Call Me Sensei lets users learn languages by dating AI characters called "Senseis" in their target language. Instead of drills and flashcards, learners practice by living out scenarios like first dates at cafés, navigating train stations, or handling travel emergencies. Each sensei acts as romantic interest, conversation partner, and language coach - all in one.
Bringing Characters to Life
MiniMax brings those characters to life through voice. Hyperbond Studio works with voice actors to establish each sensei's core sound, then MiniMax's models generate natural, expressive dialogue across countless situations while maintaining conversational speed. Senseis can shift smoothly from teasing to serious, encouraging to disappointed, carrying emotional texture across entire story arcs rather than just individual lines.
"Call Me Sensei depends on how human the senseis feel. We evaluated several TTS providers, and MiniMax stood out for emotional range and multilingual consistency, particularly for Asian languages which are often overlooked by other models," said Shawn Tan, Co-founder and CEO of Hyperbond Studio. "MiniMax gives those characters voices you can actually develop feelings for."
"Hyperbond Studio is building a new category at the intersection of learning, companionship and interactive storytelling," said Tiantong Chen, Global Business Manager at MiniMax. "We're excited our speech models are helping them explore what happens when emotionally rich characters become the primary way people learn."
What's Next
The MiniMax integration currently underpins all spoken interactions in Call Me Sensei and will support upcoming features including deeper relationship routes, simulated phone calls, and additional language pairs. Call Me Sensei is now in open alpha on App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android), with open beta launching February 2026.
About Hyperbond Studio
Hyperbond Studio builds emotionally intelligent AI products at the intersection of education, companionship, and interactive entertainment. Its flagship product, Call Me Sensei, built on a proprietary AI architecture focused on emotional intelligence and long-term memory, helps learners practice real-world language through immersive dating-sim experiences. Operating as a distributed team across Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and India, Hyperbond Studio brings native cultural and language context into the design of its AI companions and scenarios.
About MiniMax
MiniMax Group Inc. (0100.HK) is a multi-billion-dollar Hong Kong-listed AI company and leading Asian foundation model provider, developing multimodal AI systems across text, audio, images, video, and music. Its technology powers natural AI interactions for millions of users and thousands of enterprises worldwide.
MiniMax Speech-2.8 Features
MiniMax's latest TTS Speech-2.8 model delivers Ultra-Fast, Ultra-Human, and Ultra-Smart experiences, including ultra-low (<250ms) latency for real-time conversational interactions, smart text normalization for URLs, emails, dates, and numbers, full voice clone with Fluent Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), and support for 40+ languages with inline code switching.