At Missional AI in Orlando in 2024, French pastor Éric Célérier shared a vision: a Bible companion in your pocket, powered by AI, that could sit with your questions, doubts and deepest needs. Two and a half years later, that vision is real, with 120,000 downloads and five million conversations, in one of the most secular countries in the world.
In this episode, recorded at the Missional AI 2026 Global Summit in Silicon Valley, James Poulter (JP) sits down with the Hello Bible team: Éric on the vision, Matthias and the team on the product and technology, and Reg, an investor who used Hello Bible daily long before he invested. It's a story about what happens when people talk to an app the way they might talk to God, about a team of humans and AI agents shipping faster than ever, and about the friendship and conviction it took to build this as a business that can endure.
After a year of private testing, Hello Bible launched publicly and quickly became a place for people's deepest questions.
Matthias, who leads operations and product design, explains that after a year of private distribution, Hello Bible launched in the app stores at the end of 2025. By early March it had reached 120,000 downloads, and it was days away from five million conversations.
Most conversations are about the Bible and its themes. But the team has noticed something more: Hello Bible has become a place where people ask questions they don't feel able to ask at church or of their pastors. That gives it a significant role as a companion.
Éric expected a helpful Bible chatbot. He didn't expect how deeply it would shape the way people live their faith.
Is Hello Bible delivering on the vision? "Yes, and beyond," Éric says. When new technologies reach people's hands, they change behavior. The smartphone didn't just change communication; it changed how we live. What surprised Éric was how much a tool like Hello Bible would shape how people live out their faith every day.
He expected a good advisor or coach. Instead, people found a safe place to share their deepest needs. All conversations are anonymized, so the team studies trends, not individuals. But as a pastor, Éric found it overwhelming to see how openly people share their sickness, broken relationships and loneliness, as if speaking to God through the app.
He's clear that Hello Bible is not God or the Holy Spirit. But he compares this moment to the printed Bible. Before it, people largely connected with Scripture through priests; the printed Bible opened the way to personal relationship with God and helped pave the way for the Reformation. Today, Éric believes, we're discovering a new way to connect with the Bible, and through it with God: a personalized companion that learns about you and responds in a warm, pastoral tone, biblically and according to your tradition.
AI is reshaping how Hello Bible builds, blending design and development and letting the team ship faster.
The team's lead developer, who has coded for 10 to 15 years, now writes code less often himself. Many days, he spins up several AI agents and directs them like a team of junior developers. AI has become part of the entire process, including design. Instead of handing work from designers to UX specialists to developers, with feedback loops at every step, the team is blending those roles. Lead product designer Benjamin now iterates on designs directly in code, so once the team agrees on a design, it's already built. The goal: test ideas, ship fast and get them to users without waste.
Éric is proud of his human team, spread across France and Madagascar, with senior developers like Alex and Raphael. But he's starting to count AI agents, named Zeus and Hermes, as part of the team too. For years, the team struggled with velocity; now it has found a better way to work.
To analyze the five million conversations, Hello Bible brought in human data scientists and also ran 13 AI agents on the same data, then compared results. Even Éric, initially reluctant, has started building with AI. In two or three days, he used Claude to create a system that sorts his email and sends him a digest every morning and evening, so his inbox stays empty. The team still hasn't given him repository access, they joke.
Hello Bible began as a ministry, but a trusted friend challenged Éric to choose a vehicle that could scale and endure.
Reg owns Global Excel, a Canadian business, and loves investing in innovation. He met Éric about ten years ago through a "Lions' Den" pitch event while serving on the boards of Power to Change Canada and Cru Canada. (Reg was a lion, Éric jokes, so what did that make him?) Since then they've journeyed together, including through Jesus.net. Reg saw in Éric someone God had called to make a difference.
For Reg, impact investing is a calling. Beyond giving, he believes the savings God has entrusted to successful businesspeople are His, and that a portion should be invested in projects with kingdom impact. He'd been using Hello Bible daily for about a year before investing, which JP calls a great definition of product-market fit.
Éric started Hello Bible as a nonprofit, because that's what he knew. It's first a mission and calling, he says, but sometimes you need the right vehicle; to fly from France to San Jose, you take a plane, not a car. Reg challenged him: you wouldn't produce a movie for theaters worldwide through a nonprofit. If a biblical companion has real value, people will pay for it, and that helps it endure. Donations are good, but raising them takes time, and Hello Bible needed speed to hire a team and reach people.
So they wrote a business plan together in a single day in Germany, working out the KPIs and the investment needed, roughly $3.5 million to break even. Reg offered to invest, and another early investor joined after asking why Éric hadn't asked her. "I didn't raise funds for Hello Bible," Éric says. "The funds raised Hello Bible."
For Reg, great companies start with people of integrity who have a big vision and will give it everything.
At his first Missional AI, Reg was asked what he looks for in faith-based ventures. He says he doesn't do deep research; he looks at people first. Is this person of integrity? Do they have a great idea and vision, and are they willing to put everything into it? Then come discipline, structure and a good business plan. (A good bottle of French wine doesn't hurt, the team jokes.)
Éric adds that the right investors bring far more than money: ideas, strategy, go-to-market and international experience. "Shareholders for me, it's like wings for a plane."
Éric's goals are ambitious. Hello Bible plans to raise a pre-Series A of about $2 million in the next six months and to launch in the Netherlands as a second market after France, then Germany, the US and the UK.
Why start in France? Some assume it was easy. Far from it, Éric says. He estimates France is only about 0.4% of the global market of people paying for apps, and Christians are a small minority of that. If it works there, it can work anywhere.
His long-term vision is a global app with tens of millions of users. Hello Bible is free with a premium version, and he hopes to partner with foundations to offer premium access free in places like Africa and India, where people can't pay. Within a year, by God's grace, he hopes to reach a million users. The goal is kingdom impact.
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Missional AI London takes place July 15, and tickets are still available. If you care about where faith and technology meet, this is the room to be in. Get your spot at missional.ai.
This episode was made possible in partnership with Transform Iran and Gloo.