alt Hacker NewsCharacter.ai files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Comments
”Character.ai’s CEO Karandeep Anand is joining Disney in a newly created role as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. Karan expects to be joined by members of Character’s technical team to build on Disney’s impressive technology capabilities to help connect fans worldwide with its beloved stories and characters in new and innovative ways.”
— https://blog.character.ai/the-next-chapter-of-entertainment-...
2 years in, the founders and 30 researchers took Google's $2.7b and left. Then they had to ban kids which was probably most of their userbase. Yet they were still putting $1m/mo on the corporate cards with 86 full time bay area employees on ~$278k average base, and almost $100k owed to DoorDash. lol
i dont know why this isn't getting much attention. Isn't this the fate of most ai chat services?
For all intents and purposes Character.ai was acquired in August 2024, and this is just the mess leftover from their run around antitrust regulation.
The company filing for chapter 11 today is shell that was left after Google "hi-quired" (the opposite of acqui-hired) the founding team. The shareholders got paid ($2.7 from Google), the founding team moved on, and what's left is the corporate structure and whoever Google did not want.
It sucks for the people left over (but then again, it also sucks to be part of the team that's laid off in a merger). It's also a terrible practice that I hope the Justice department and the CFTC will put an end to soon.