alt Hacker NewsFor 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 ($2.7B 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.
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American DOJ and CFTC won't do anything about these kinds of situations.
Isn't the opposite of acqui-hired just... not acquired nor hired?
>It's also a terrible practice that I hope the Justice department and the CFTC will put an end to soon.
Laws aren't real till 2029, at least
> It sucks for the people left over
Not clear that this is true financially. Of course, it sucks to be at a sinking ship, but in most of these the people left behind are compensated as both employees and shareholders.