John Kobs Giant is the story of a founder who built one of America’s largest rental platforms, became a father and then looked at his toddler’s iPad with a different kind of professional curiosity. Kobs is the co-founder and CEO of Giant, a San Francisco company, formally Giant Labs, Inc., that makes an AI storytelling app where children create characters, appear in their own episodes and talk with characters who remember them. In February 2026, the company announced an $8 million seed round led by Matrix, Decasonic and Griffin Gaming Partners. Here is how Kobs got there, how the app works, what the safety claims are and what questions remain for AI built for children.
This article is for information only and is not parenting, child-development or safety advice. Giant Labs, Inc. (giant.org) is not affiliated with other companies named Giant. Parents should review any app’s privacy policy and settings themselves.
John Kobs Giant: Who Is the Founder?
John Kobs is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Giant. On his X profile he lists himself as CEO and co-founder of Giant and founder and chairman of Apartment List. The Giant website signs his founder statement “CEO & Founder, Dad,” which captures how he frames the company: as a father building something he wants his own children to use.
According to Crunchbase, he has two current roles, at Apartment List and at Giant, and past experience that includes co-founding Autolist. The same profile shows he is also an active angel investor, with dozens of investments.
His co-founder is David Silverman. In his own words in Fortune, Kobs says he and Silverman started Giant to let children create characters, explore ideas and shape stories as they unfold. The sources reviewed do not detail Silverman’s earlier career, so this article does not describe it. The pairing of a repeat founder and a co-founder is the core of the John Kobs Giant story.
From Autolist and Apartment List to Giant
Kobs is best known for Apartment List. He founded the rental marketplace in 2011, and a profile on TechNews180 says he led it as CEO for 14 years and scaled it to handle roughly 3% of all rental moves in the United States. In his Fortune piece, he uses the same figure.
Earlier, Crunchbase lists him as a co-founder and chairman of Autolist, a car-shopping marketplace. Building two consumer marketplaces gave him experience with search, matching, trust and the unglamorous work of running a large consumer product.
That background shapes Giant in two ways. First, it signals to investors that the founder has scaled a company before. Second, it explains why he approaches a children’s product like a platform, with systems for moderation and parent visibility, not just a single app idea. The marketplace years are the operating foundation of John Kobs Giant.
The Flight to Cleveland
The idea came on an airplane. In his Fortune op-ed, Kobs writes that on a flight from San Francisco to Cleveland a couple of years earlier, his two-year-old daughter was running up and down the aisle, and he and his wife knew it was iPad time.
While scrolling through a popular kids’ cartoon, he noticed the pace: fast cuts, constant scene changes and another burst of action before the last one had settled. He wanted his daughter to have room to wonder what might happen next, and a chance to decide.
He also thought back to his own childhood, with Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, Bob Ross reruns and Choose Your Own Adventure books, where his decisions changed the story. That memory is the creative seed of John Kobs Giant: a screen experience in which the child shapes the story.
The Problem: Passive Screens and Endless Swiping
The problem, as Kobs frames it, is passivity and habit. He says he is bothered by the habit that feeds like YouTube Shorts encourage, where the moment something loses attention, the user swipes to something else. He says he wants his daughters’ screen time to give them reasons to stay with an idea, ask another question and see what they can make of it.
He cites data to show the scale. A 2025 Common Sense Media report, as he describes it, found that 58% of American 4-year-olds have their own tablet, rising to 68% of 8-year-olds, and that children aged 5 to 8 average nearly three and a half hours of screen time a day. He argues that what happens during those hours deserves as much scrutiny as how many hours parents allow.
It is also a competitive argument. He says rejecting AI in entertainment hands an advantage to the large companies that can already afford to use it, while for a startup AI makes competing possible. Turning passive viewing into active creation is the problem John Kobs Giant set out to solve.
Building Giant: Create, Watch and Talk
The product has three core experiences. According to PocketGamer.biz, Create lets children design their own episodes and worlds, Watch shows children appearing as cartoon characters in personalized shows, and Talk enables real-time conversations with responsive characters.
The company’s website describes the aim as building a universe of characters and living worlds that kids do not just watch but enter, shape and grow up with. Its tagline, “Inventing Tomorrow’s Nostalgia,” says the company wants children to help create the stories they will remember as adults.
Kobs described the underlying thesis in the funding announcement: the internet is optimized for attention, while kids need imagination. He said the company turns kids from consumers into creators, building what he and his co-founder want their own kids to grow up with. The three modes are the product backbone of John Kobs Giant.
TalkTime and Memory-Driven Characters
The feature that stands out on the homepage is TalkTime. The site shows a conversation in which a character named Princess Pia asks a child what glowing symbols might say, with prompts such as “Take me to ancient Egypt,” “Can I meet a T. rex?” and “Why does the moon glow?”
According to the funding coverage, the characters are memory-driven, meaning they remember a child and evolve alongside them. Announcement materials describe an AI-native platform that lets children become the stars of their own stories, talk to characters who remember them and create worlds that grow with their imagination.
Parents’ reviews on the website point to why this matters to families. One says her daughter’s character looks like her and the others use her name, and another says their son gets to say “That’s me!” Those testimonials are chosen by the company, so they are marketing. The characters and memory are the differentiating technology of John Kobs Giant.
Safety: COPPA, No Ads and Parent Visibility
Any AI product for children has to answer safety questions first. The homepage states that Giant is COPPA certified by Privo, with no ads, and the FAQ describes the product as safe, private and parent-approved, with no ads and no tracking. COPPA is the U.S. children’s online privacy law, and certification programs like Privo’s verify that companies follow its rules.
Kobs adds detail in Fortune. He writes that privacy is only part of keeping children safe. The company has built systems that flag unsuitable content and give parents visibility into everything their children create. It also thinks carefully about what characters say, what they generate and how they respond to a child, and it carries no ads, so no advertiser competes for a child’s attention.
These are company statements, and parents should check the privacy policy, the COPPA page and the parental controls themselves. Independent research on conversational AI and children is still developing. Kobs also appeared on a panel with Jonathan Haidt about The Anxious Generation and the future of AI, according to his LinkedIn repost, which shows he engages with critics of children’s technology. Clear safety commitments are central to how John Kobs Giant asks for parents’ trust.
Launching in May 2025
Giant launched its app in May 2025. According to the funding coverage, more than 200,000 personalized episodes had been generated since the May 2025 launch by the time of the seed announcement. The company says it is available on the App Store and Google Play, and the homepage cites a 4.8 rating on the App Store.
In November 2025, Kobs wrote on X that Giant was selected as a Lightspeed Game Changer that year, a recognition from the venture firm’s gaming program. The company also positions itself in the games and entertainment category, which is why gaming-focused funds backed it.
The launch was a consumer subscription-style app with no advertising, so its growth depends on parents downloading and keeping it. That is a harder path than ad-supported media, but it matches the company’s promise. The launch is where John Kobs Giant moved from idea to product.
Inside the $8 Million Seed Round
On February 23 to 24, 2026, Giant announced an $8 million seed round, reported by GamesBeat and others. According to PocketGamer.biz, the round was led by Matrix, Decasonic and Griffin Gaming Partners, with participation from Perceptive Ventures, Flex Capital, Arbitrum Gaming Ventures, Unpopular Ventures and LightShed Ventures.
TechNews180 reports that Giant will use the capital to expand the platform and grow the team, deepening AI personalization and extending the range of worlds and characters. Kobs wrote on LinkedIn that the company had raised over $8 million to build “the imagination engine of the internet.”
The round was labeled a seed, even though the company had already launched, which is common for consumer apps that raise early to prove traction. For comparison with other AI-focused rounds, see our story on Shijia Liao’s Fish Audio, and for more on how funding shapes young companies, see our Funding News section. The round gives John Kobs Giant resources to build on its early launch.
The Investors Backing John Kobs
The investor list is notable for its depth. Dana Stalder, a general partner at Matrix, said in the announcement that he has been investing in Kobs since 2013, which matches Kobs’s Apartment List history. He described Giant as the most ambitious expression of Kobs’s long-term vision, combining creativity, emotional intelligence and AI at scale.
Paul Hsu, CEO of Decasonic, an early-stage AI venture firm, said Giant combines a first-principles understanding of kids’ creativity with AI that adapts as children turn ideas into stories and stories into worlds. Rick Johanson of Arbitrum Gaming Ventures said the team brings rare depth of experience, and a LinkedIn repost by David Silverman quotes an investor praising Kobs’s authenticity as a parent.
A repeat-founder backer such as Matrix lends credibility and long-term patience, and gaming-focused funds such as Griffin Gaming Partners bring industry networks. That mix of capital and experience strengthens John Kobs Giant.
Traction: Families and Conversations
The traction numbers vary by source and date. At the seed announcement, PocketGamer.biz reported that Giant’s platform had surpassed 13 million minutes of conversations between children and characters. The company’s current homepage reports 85,000-plus families and 2 million TalkTime minutes, while the reviews section on the same page says “Loved by 60k+ families.”
Those figures do not line up neatly. They may count different things, such as total conversation minutes across all features versus TalkTime specifically, and the family counts may be from different dates. Readers should treat them as company-reported and check the latest numbers.
What the figures show is meaningful engagement for a young app: millions of minutes of conversation and hundreds of thousands of generated episodes. They do not say how many families use it regularly or how many pay. The traction is early proof for John Kobs Giant, not a finished picture.
Content and Community: Explore, Coloring Pages and a Scholarship
Giant also uses content to reach parents. The website has an Explore section with pages answering kids’ questions, such as why cats purr, whether ants sleep, how many brains an octopus has and how big a T. rex was. It also offers coloring pages, how-to-draw guides and a Halloween coloring page collection, which are the kind of free resources parents search for.
The company runs a scholarship. The Giant App Creative Storytelling Scholarship is a $2,000 award for students who show exceptional creativity and storytelling ability, with applications open until November 30, 2027, and the winner announced on December 31, 2027, according to the website, which links to the Bold.org listing.
These pieces serve two purposes. They bring in families through search and social media, and they reinforce the creative identity of the brand outside the app. The content strategy is the marketing engine of John Kobs Giant.
Where Giant Stands in the Market
Children’s entertainment is dominated by large platforms and studios. YouTube and streaming services hold much of kids’ screen time, while educational apps and games compete for parents’ attention. A new wave of AI products is also targeting kids, and some of them have drawn scrutiny from parents and regulators.
Giant’s differentiators are clear. It focuses on creation, with the child as a participant. It uses memory so characters remember each child. It says it has no ads and is COPPA certified. And it is led by a founder with a record of scaling consumer marketplaces and investors who have backed him before.
The risks are real. Children’s AI is a sensitive category where one bad interaction can damage trust. Subscription revenue depends on retention. Big platforms can copy features. And the safety claims must hold up as the product scales. In a crowded field, John Kobs Giant competes on trust and creativity.
Risks and Open Questions
A fair article on a children’s AI company should name the open questions.
Safety at scale. The company describes content flagging and parent visibility, but independent audits of how conversational AI behaves with children are limited.
Child development. Whether interactive AI characters help or hinder children’s development is not settled, and researchers continue to study it.
Metrics. Family and minute counts are company-reported and appear inconsistent across the site.
Business model. An ad-free app depends on parents paying, and the pricing and conversion data are not public in the sources reviewed.
Regulation. Rules for AI and children are changing, and COPPA is only one part of the legal landscape.
None of these questions is unique to Giant, but they matter more because the users are children. Naming them is part of an honest look at John Kobs Giant.
Leadership Style and What’s Next
Kobs leads as a repeat founder who talks about the company in personal terms. His public writing is built on a father’s perspective, and he describes himself as a father first and a builder second. He is also willing to engage with critics, appearing on the Anxious Generation panel and writing publicly about screen time.
His references to the 1980s golden age of kids’ TV, to Choose Your Own Adventure books and to limits on screen time show a founder who positions Giant as a better option, not an unlimited one. The roadmap points to more worlds and characters, deeper personalization and growing the team with the seed funding. The test will be whether families keep using the app after the novelty fades. That discipline will define the next chapter of John Kobs Giant.
Lessons From the John Kobs Giant Journey
The John Kobs Giant journey offers five practical lessons for founders.
First, start from a problem you live with. A restless toddler on a flight gave Kobs a vivid, personal reason to build.
Second, use your track record. Backers who funded him in 2013 returned, which shows how reputation compounds.
Third, make trust the product. In a children’s category, no ads, parent visibility and clear certifications are features, not footnotes.
Fourth, turn consumers into creators. Letting the child shape the story is a stronger idea than another feed.
Fifth, publish content that parents search for. Coloring pages, how-to-draw guides and kids’ questions bring families in before they download.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is John Kobs?
John Kobs is the co-founder and CEO of Giant. He previously founded Apartment List, which he says accounts for 3% of U.S. rental moves, and co-founded Autolist.
What is the John Kobs Giant story?
It is the story of a repeat founder who, after a flight with his young daughter, built an AI storytelling app for kids with co-founder David Silverman, and raised an $8 million seed round led by Matrix, Decasonic and Griffin Gaming Partners.
What is Giant?
Giant is a San Francisco-based app from Giant Labs, Inc. where children create characters and worlds, appear in personalized episodes and talk with memory-driven characters.
Who founded Giant?
John Kobs and David Silverman co-founded Giant. Kobs is CEO.
How much funding has Giant raised?
Giant announced an $8 million seed round in February 2026, with Matrix, Decasonic and Griffin Gaming Partners leading.
Is Giant safe for kids?
The company says it is COPPA certified by Privo, has no ads and no tracking, flags unsuitable content and gives parents visibility into what children create. These are company claims, so parents should review the privacy policy and controls.
What are Create, Watch and Talk?
They are Giant’s three modes: Create for designing episodes and worlds, Watch for personalized shows starring the child, and Talk for real-time conversations with characters.
How many families use Giant?
The website cites 85,000-plus families in one place and 60,000-plus in another, so the figure varies. These are company-reported numbers.
When did Giant launch?
The app launched in May 2025.
Is Giant free?
The sources reviewed do not describe pricing. Check the App Store or Google Play listing for the current terms.
Conclusion
John Kobs Giant shows how a personal moment can turn into a company. By pairing generative AI with a child-led storytelling format, a no-ads policy and a COPPA certification, Kobs and Silverman built an app that families have used for millions of minutes and that investors backed with an $8 million seed. The open questions are the ones that matter most for children’s products: whether safety holds at scale, whether families keep coming back and how the research on AI and child development evolves. If Giant answers them well, Kobs may help define what screen time for children could look like.
For more founder journeys in AI and software, see Stephen Haney’s Paper, Francesco Decamilli’s Uniti and Runlayer’s Series A on Denote Press, or browse all Founder Stories.
