# C12s

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/c12s-ai/ · added 2026-11-07 · updated 2026-11-07

**In short.** C12s (AI moderator and support agent for Discord, Telegram and Slack communities, Portugal): US$400 a month verified by Stripe, October 2026. Evidence grade A: disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor. Team: 1 founder listed on TrustMRR under the handle Chinoman10; built by the Lisbon IT firm Momentum One; the Premium plan offers access to the founders; headcount not published. Launched 25 February 2025; still running, revenue flat.

AI moderator and support agent for Discord, Telegram and Slack communities · Portugal · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running, revenue flat · group: Customer support agents

- Outcome: US$400 a month verified by Stripe, October 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: A; headline in US dollars: 4800)
- Launch: 25 February 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 20
- Team: 1 founder listed on TrustMRR under the handle Chinoman10; built by the Lisbon IT firm Momentum One; the Premium plan offers access to the founders; headcount not published
- Outside funding: None found in the sources
- Main factor: A niche its developer already served
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 3, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 2
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Bootstrapped, Running, B2B, Community moderation

Links:

- Visit c12s.ai: https://c12s.ai/
- Verified revenue on TrustMRR: https://trustmrr.com/startup/c12s-ai

**The product.** An AI agent that a company adds to its Discord server, Telegram group or Slack workspace (Slack in beta). It answers members' questions around the clock from a knowledge base that it builds from the company's own websites, files and FAQs, removes spam, scams and unwanted users, and reports which questions members ask. Plans cost US$0 to US$500 a month and are priced by the number of AI answers.

**Why it worked.** Large online groups get the same questions again and again, in many languages, and scam messages arrive at hours when no moderator is awake. C12s answers from the project's own documents and deletes the scams, so a small moderator team can cover the whole day. Its blog and FAQ name Web3 projects and gaming groups as typical users, and its developer, the Lisbon IT firm Momentum One, already sold Discord set-up and moderation services to such projects.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

C12s is an AI moderator, a program that reads the messages in an online group and acts on them as a human moderator would: it answers, warns, deletes or bans. It joins a Discord server, a Telegram group or, in beta, a Slack workspace as a bot, an automated account that a group admin adds to the group. It answers from a knowledge base, a set of question-and-answer entries that the AI searches before it replies; the customer can paste the addresses of its web pages and the AI writes the entries. It removes spam with pattern rules, fixed text patterns such as regular expressions, and on paid plans also with semantic matching, which compares the meaning of a message with examples of unwanted messages instead of its exact words.

The only person named is the founder's TrustMRR handle, Chinoman10, in Portugal. The site says C12s was "Developed by Momentum One", a Lisbon IT firm, legal name Momentum Lancer Lda., that sells web development, IT consulting and Discord services. The earliest Internet Archive copy of c12s.ai, from 31 May 2024, shows a Telegram-only version with a "Book a call" button. TrustMRR gives 25 February 2025 as the founding date. Version 1.0.0 opened sign-up to the public on 7 October 2025, "after over a year of development behind closed doors with several large teams", and 16 more versions followed by 10 December 2025.

TrustMRR reads the company's Stripe account through an API key, a password that lets one program read another program's data, so its figures are grade A. On 7 November 2026 it showed US$8,562 in total revenue, US$4,950 in the last 12 months, exactly US$400 in every calendar month from December 2025 to October 2026, 3 active subscriptions and MRR (monthly recurring revenue, the subscription income expected each month) of US$817. The two latest payments, US$300 on 30 October and US$100 on 3 November 2026, equal the monthly prices of the Pro and Basic plans, which points to list-price subscriptions rather than a custom contract. Everything about the team comes from the company's own pages, and no source gives a headcount.

## Pricing

C12s prices in November 2026, from its pricing page; the yearly prices come from the page's own pricing script, which the page shows when the Yearly switch is on (grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 | 0 | 100 answers a month, up to 2 communities, 3 personality presets |
| Basic | 83 | 100 | 2,000 answers a month, 4 communities, semantic moderation |
| Pro | 250 | 300 | 8,000 answers a month, 6 communities, custom bot branding |
| Premium | 417 | 500 | 20,000 answers a month, 10 communities, 1 year of data |

Yearly billing costs ten times the monthly price, so two months are free: US$1,000, US$3,000 and US$5,000 a year, shown here per month and rounded. Each plan includes a number of AI answers per month. With optional auto-scaling, extra answers cost US$9 per 200 on Basic, US$25 per 800 on Pro and US$40 per 2,000 on Premium. Each community project is billed separately. Support is community channels and AI on Free, email on Basic, chat on Pro and "Access to Founders" on Premium.

## How much revenue does C12s make? The numbers, graded

A Stripe-verified US$400 a month, flat for eleven months, from an AI moderator built by a Lisbon IT firm for Web3 and gaming communities

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per month, December 2025 to October 2026 | US$400 in each of the 11 months | A | TrustMRR monthly revenue timeline, read from Stripe through an API key, last synced 7 November 2026. November 2026 shows US$100 so far. | [1] |
| Run rate from the monthly figure | US$4,800 a year | calc | Calculated: US$400 times 12. This is the headline figure on this page. | [1] |
| Total revenue to 7 November 2026 | US$8,562 | A | TrustMRR, all time. Agent Money List repeats the same figure as of 5 November 2026. | [1, 13] |
| Revenue in the last 12 months | US$4,950 | A | TrustMRR, 12 months to 7 November 2026. | [1] |
| Revenue before December 2025 | US$4,062 | calc | Calculated: US$8,562 all time minus US$4,500 from December 2025 to November 2026 (11 times US$400, plus US$100 in November). This money came in before the flat months began, partly while the product was still closed to the public; the public profile does not split it by month. | [1, 4] |
| MRR and subscriptions, 7 November 2026 | US$817 MRR, 3 active subscriptions | A | TrustMRR snapshot. MRR is above the US$400 collected in each month; the profile does not explain the difference. Last-30-day growth: 0.0%. | [1] |
| The two latest payments | US$300 on 30 October 2026, US$100 on 3 November 2026 | A | TrustMRR daily revenue table. The amounts equal the monthly prices of the Pro and Basic plans on the pricing page. | [1, 3] |
| Founding date | 25 February 2025 | C | A field that the founder fills in on the TrustMRR profile. | [1] |
| Earliest Internet Archive copy of c12s.ai | 31 May 2024 | C | Telegram only, with Discord "coming soon", a "Book a call" button and a sign-up link. | [9] |
| Public opening | Version 1.0.0, 7 October 2025 | C | Changelog: "the initial release of C12s, finally opening the door to the public, after over a year of development behind closed doors with several large teams". It also says registrations were now open. | [4] |
| Releases after the public opening | 16 versions, 1.1.0 to 1.7.1, by 10 December 2025 | C | Changelog. About nine weeks: Calculated, 7 October to 10 December 2025 is 64 days. | [4] |
| Founder | Handle Chinoman10 only, country Portugal | C | Founder-written part of the TrustMRR profile, which gives 1,208 X followers. No source read gives a name. | [1] |
| Developer | Momentum One (Momentum Lancer Lda.), Lisbon | C | C12s footer: "Developed by Momentum One". Momentum One's terms name "MOMENTUM LANCER LDA." Its site sells web design and development, software development, IT consulting and Discord services. | [2, 10, 11] |
| Team size | not published | C | The pricing page lists "Access to Founders" as Premium support. Momentum One calls itself "a team of very passionate people" and lists six open roles, among them Discord Moderator and Discord Bot Developer. Agent Money List labels the operator "Solopreneur" without a source. | [3, 10, 12, 13] |
| Outside funding | none found | C | No source read mentions an investor or a funding round. | [1, 2, 10] |
| Platforms | Discord and Telegram; Slack in beta | C | Docs overview and docs home page. The 2024 page listed Telegram only. | [5, 9] |
| AI model | not named | C | Home-page FAQ: "C12s uses a modern large language model." The changelog mentions inference and embedding providers and a closed beta of "Bring Your Own Keys" for self-hosted or fine-tuned models. | [2, 4] |
| Home-page counters | +500k users have access, +845 scams deleted per day, 2 seconds maximum time to answer | C | Values from the page source (the page counts up to them by script). No source supports them. The TrustMRR field "Estimated user count" shows 0. | [2, 1] |
| Time from the founding date to the October 2026 figure | 20 months | calc | Calculated: February 2025 to October 2026. From the first archived page, May 2024, it is 29 months. | [1, 9] |

How to read this table: a grade A value was read by TrustMRR from the company's Stripe account. A grade C value is a statement on the company's own site, docs or changelog, on its developer's site, or in a directory. A "calc" value (grade X) was computed on this page from the rows it names.

## When did C12s launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a Telegram-only page with a "Book a call" button in May 2024 to a flat US$400 a month in 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

- **31 May 2024** (grade C [9]): The earliest archived copy of c12s.ai: an AI companion for Telegram communities, Discord "coming soon", a "Book a call" button. The page also announces planned crypto price answers and wallet transactions.
- **25 February 2025** (grade C [1]): The founding date that the founder gives on TrustMRR.
- **21 April to 6 May 2025** (grade C [17, 15, 14, 16, 19]): Blog posts on AI help for moderators, community security, translation and llm.txt files; the privacy policy is dated 6 May 2025.
- **7 October 2025** (grade C [4]): Version 1.0.0 opens registration to the public after more than a year of closed development with several large teams. Sign-in moves to the company's own system.
- **October to December 2025** (grade C [4]): 16 more versions: community self-reporting, growth statistics, a closed beta for customers' own model keys, logs, and a calibration mode that tests moderation rules without punishing anyone.
- **December 2025 to October 2026** (grade A [1]): Exactly US$400 of revenue in every month, read from Stripe.
- **7 November 2026** (grade A [1]): US$8,562 in total revenue, MRR of US$817 and 3 active subscriptions on TrustMRR.

## Why did C12s work?

### Answers from the customer's own pages

The customer pastes the addresses of its website, FAQ and docs, and the AI writes question-and-answer entries from them; the customer then marks each entry to be ignored, used to write a reply, or pasted as written. A semantic search on the knowledge page shows why the AI answered or stayed silent. Since version 1.6.4 an extra step filters out entries that do not fit the question, so the bot does not reply when it should not.

### Moderation in layers

Every plan has pattern rules; paid plans add semantic matching and AI policies. A calibration mode logs what the bot would have deleted or banned without doing it, so admins can test rules on a live group first. Members can report messages with a /report command, and the bot then acts on the report.

### Priced by answers

Each plan includes a fixed number of AI answers a month, from 100 to 20,000, and sells extra answers in packs. That ties the price to the model cost, which grows with each answer. Yearly billing gives two months free.

### A niche its developer already served

Momentum One sells Discord set-up and moderation services and links Web3 clients from its home page; four of those also appear in the C12s logo wall. The docs' example of a shared knowledge base is one for all Solana projects, and the FAQ asks whether C12s works for Web3 communities and gaming. No source says how the paying customers found the product.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's site, docs and changelog (grade C) and from the page source of its sites.

- The marketing site and the docs are built with Astro; the docs use Starlight, the documentation theme for Astro, as the page source shows.
- In version 1.0.0 sign-in moved from a third-party provider to the company's own system built on the BetterAuth library.
- PostHog has attributed sign-ups to referring websites since version 1.2.0; the home page also loads Cloudflare Pages Analytics.
- Stripe hosts the subscription page. When a renewal payment fails, the customer is moved to the Free plan.
- The language model is not named. In November 2025 the backend was rebuilt to stream answers from "slower inference providers", embedding calls were traced to compare providers, and a closed beta lets customers bring their own keys or self-hosted models.
- Customers set it up without the company: add the bot @C12sbot to a Telegram group and paste a code into the chat, or follow the Discord install guide. Each project is billed on its own.

Sources: [4, 7, 8, 2, 5]

## Who tried this before C12s, and why did they fail?

Four companies in our database of failed startups tried to answer questions automatically inside chat tools, or to run group chat itself. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Niles (2017 to 2020; funding US$2.8M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A chatbot inside Slack that gave staff instant answers from a company knowledge base.
- Why it died: AI answers became common faster than expected, Slack added similar features itself, and rivals such as Guru and Confluence grew their own.
- Record: 

### Answerly (2013 to 2016; funding US$550K; cause: Product/Tech Failure)

- Promise: FAQ bots on company websites that answer routine support questions and pass only complex ones to people.
- Why it died: Language processing at the time could not handle real customer questions, and the system needed a lot of manual set-up.
- Record: 

### Hipmob (2012 to 2015; funding US$120K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Customer support chat built into mobile apps and websites.
- Why it died: Intercom and Zendesk added the same chat features, and Hipmob could not give customers a reason to switch.
- Record: 

### Convore (2011 to 2014; funding US$200K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Real-time group chats around topics, for community discussion.
- Why it died: Slack came to dominate real-time group chat, and Convore had few features of its own to keep users.
- Record: 

## What changed

Niles and Answerly tried to answer questions automatically before language models could read a question the way a person does; the Answerly record says the language processing of 2013 to 2016 could not handle real questions and needed a lot of manual set-up. C12s uses a large language model that matches a question with an answer written in other words, and it writes its own knowledge entries from a website, so the AI now does most of the manual set-up that Answerly needed; the home page says set-up takes "less than 5 minutes".

The platform risk is the same one that ended Niles. C12s exists only as a bot inside Discord, Telegram and Slack, and those companies set the rules for bots and can add their own AI. Its answer is a narrow niche with needs that a general tool may not cover: Web3 and gaming groups with many languages and constant scam attempts, a niche that its developer already worked in.

## Can one person copy C12s now?

**Verdict: The product, yes. The revenue is still small.**

An AI moderator is built from known parts: a bot account, a knowledge base, a language model and moderation rules. One developer can build it; Watchdog, another story on this site, is a one-person version. C12s added a developer that already worked with Web3 communities and a year of closed testing with large groups, and in its eleventh flat month it still collected US$400.

1. Pick one type of community with a repeated pain, such as scams and the same questions in many languages.
2. Let the customer build the knowledge base by pasting web addresses, and show which entry produced each answer.
3. Add a dry-run mode so admins can test bans before they take effect.
4. Price by answers per month and sell extra answers in packs, so the price follows the model cost.

**What is still open.** Niches outside Web3 with large groups and repeated questions, such as game communities, open-source projects and online courses, and platforms that C12s does not serve yet; its FAQ asks about Twitch, X, YouTube and WhatsApp.

## What could go wrong for C12s?

- **Logo wall and counters without a source.** The home page shows ten logos under "Trusted by these leading companies": Boinkers, Delphi Digital, Hermes Protocol, Pokergram, QuoVadis Web3, Quranium, Sledgehammer, Turbin3, Unicorn Factory Lisboa and Web3 Builders Alliance. No case study or customer quotation supports them, and four (Delphi Digital, Hermes Protocol, Sledgehammer, Web3 Builders Alliance) are also linked as clients from Momentum One's own home page. The counters say "+500k" users have access and "+845" scams are deleted per day; TrustMRR shows 3 active subscriptions.
- **Web3 customers and a crypto feature planned in 2024.** Most of the logos are Web3 projects, and one is named Pokergram; this story did not check what each of them sells. The May 2024 copy of the site said the team was "laying the ground work to allow users to call/build web3 transactions": to ask "the current price of a cryptocurrency", see "where to buy it" and get "a Transaction for approval to the user's wallet". Today's home page, pricing page, blog and docs do not offer this; the docs mention crypto only as scams to detect, such as "airdrop" wallet drainers. The FAQ says C12s can connect to Web3 tools through custom API integrations.
- **Small and concentrated revenue.** Revenue has been US$400 a month for eleven months, with 3 active subscriptions. The two latest payments match the Pro and Basic list prices, so they look like self-service subscriptions, not a custom service contract, but the public profile does not say how many customers pay; one customer could hold two projects, since each project is billed on its own. Losing the US$100 payment would cut revenue by a quarter, losing the US$300 payment by three quarters. MRR of US$817 is above the cash collected each month, and the profile does not say why.
- **Who runs it.** The only person named is a TrustMRR handle, Chinoman10. The developer, Momentum One, is an IT services firm that lists open jobs; no source gives the number of people working on C12s, and the Premium support line "Access to Founders" suggests more than one founder. The home-page FAQ still says access is through a waitlist and that "One of our team members will reach out", while the docs say registration opened on 7 October 2025 and the home page links to a sign-up page.
- **Scraping and stored messages.** The product builds its knowledge base by scraping the web pages that the customer gives it, and a planned web-search feature would answer from other pages. It stores community messages for statistics; the FAQ says "C12s requires data storadge for stats and analytics about the community" (the page's spelling). A blog post of 4 May 2025 says the company respects llm.txt files. The privacy policy, last updated 6 May 2025, is short and does not name the AI provider.
- **Competition and model providers.** Watchdog, a one-person AI moderator for Discord and Telegram on this site, has a reported figure of US$444 a month (grade D), so C12s is in a small, crowded niche; its own blog recommends other Discord security bots, Sledgehammer and Beemo, for raids and spam. C12s does not name its language model. The changelog speaks of inference and embedding "providers" and offers a closed beta for customers' own keys, so the cost and quality of each answer depend on outside model providers, and the bot itself depends on Discord, Telegram and Slack.

## Sources

1. TrustMRR: C12s AI, markdown profile, revenue synced 7 November 2026 — https://trustmrr.com/startup/c12s-ai.md (grade A). Read the markdown profile on 7 November 2026. Revenue, MRR, subscriptions and the daily and monthly tables are in its Verification Sources section (Stripe API key, grade A); founder handle, country, founding date and pricing text are founder-written (grade C).
2. C12s home page — https://c12s.ai/ (grade C). Read in full on 7 November 2026, including the FAQ answers in the page's structured data, the logo names in the image text and the counter values in the page source.
3. C12s pricing page and its pricing script — https://c12s.ai/pricing/ (grade C). Read in full. The monthly prices are in the page; the yearly prices (US$1,000, US$3,000, US$5,000) were read from the script that draws the table, /_astro/FeaturesTable.B7hX53g1.js.
4. C12s Docs: Changelog, versions 1.0.0 to 1.7.1 — https://docs.c12s.ai/resources/changelog/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the public opening, the release dates, BetterAuth, PostHog, the providers and the Bring Your Own Keys beta.
5. C12s Docs: Overview — https://docs.c12s.ai/getting-started/overview/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the platforms, the shared knowledge base example and the set-up steps.
6. C12s Docs: Knowledge Base & AI — https://docs.c12s.ai/knowledge/creating-sources/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the AI import from URLs and the semantic search.
7. C12s Docs: Account & Billing — https://docs.c12s.ai/account/account-billing/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the Stripe-hosted subscription page and the downgrade after a failed renewal.
8. C12s: Welcome to C12s (how to start) — https://c12s.ai/how-to-start/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the self-service Telegram set-up and the separate billing of each project.
9. Internet Archive copy of c12s.ai, 31 May 2024 — https://web.archive.org/web/20240531160705/https://c12s.ai/ (grade C). Read in full. The earliest copy that the Wayback availability service returned. Source for the 2024 product and the planned crypto feature.
10. Momentum One home page — https://momentum-one.io/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the developer's services, location and linked clients.
11. Momentum One: Terms of Use — https://momentum-one.io/terms (grade C). Read the opening section, which names the legal entity Momentum Lancer Lda.
12. Momentum One: We are hiring — https://momentum-one.io/hiring (grade C). Read in full. Lists six open roles.
13. Agent Money List: C12s AI, US$817 verified MRR — https://agentmoneylist.com/e/c12s-ai/ (grade C). Read in full. A directory that copies the TrustMRR figures as of 5 November 2026; its operator label and its cost and time figures are its own estimates.
14. C12s blog, 3 May 2025: Why Translations are Essential for Community Moderation — https://c12s.ai/blog/translation-is-essencial-for-communities/ (grade C). Read in full. Names Web3 projects and gaming guilds as users.
15. C12s blog, 29 April 2025: Securing Your Community in 2025 — https://c12s.ai/blog/security-for-your-community/ (grade C). Read in full. Recommends the Sledgehammer and Beemo bots.
16. C12s blog, 4 May 2025: What Is llm.txt and Why It Matters for the Future of the Web — https://c12s.ai/blog/llm-txt-important/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the company's statement on llm.txt.
17. C12s blog, 21 April 2025: How AI Can Support the Next Generation of Online Moderators — https://c12s.ai/blog/ai-supports-mods/ (grade C). Read in full. The earliest dated blog post.
18. C12s Docs: Core Concepts — https://docs.c12s.ai/getting-started/core-concepts/ (grade C). Read the moderation sections, which describe crypto scams such as airdrop wallet drainers as content to detect.
19. C12s Privacy Policy, last updated 6 May 2025 — https://c12s.ai/privacy-policy/ (grade C). Read in full.
20. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run C12s? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: C12s).