An Italian founder is pushing an AI tanning app globally, mostly by himself.
Tan AI works like this: users upload a selfie, get a personalized tanning plan, and receive product and nutrition suggestions. There’s also a built-in assistant that answers questions, similar to ChatGPT.
Released about 9 months ago, the app recently jumped from under 5K downloads to 20K in the last 30 days.
The growth is tied directly to founder-led content.
Emanuele Pio Totaro runs accounts in both Italian and English, testing different angles until one clearly worked: “ChatGPT for tanning.”
On August 8, 2025, he hit 1M views and 11.3K bookmarks with a short Italian video:
“Un italiano ha creato ChatGPT però per abbronzarsi”
(“An Italian created ChatGPT, but for tanning”)
He replicated the same idea in English, but the results didn’t match the Italian performance.
That’s what makes the distribution interesting.
Despite weaker English content performance, the app is currently ranked in the top 10 in the U.S., while only around the top 50 in Italy.
One possible explanation is search. The name “Tan AI” is highly direct and likely captures intent from users already looking for tanning-related tools.
We’ve seen similar naming strategies work before (Cal AI), where a simple “AI + niche” combination drives discovery on its own.
It’s still unclear how much of the U.S. growth is coming from content versus search, but we will keep you updated.
Leave a Reply