Character.ai Is Bankrupt
Silicon Valley's golden child didn't live to see its fifth birthday.
Hi, AI Enthusiasts!
Welcome back to our Deep Dive. This one could not wait until Friday. The deep dive for all paid members will go out this Friday as usual; this post is an extra update.
Character.ai was one of the first hits of the AI boom. Six months after launch it was worth $1 billion, and within a year its users were spending more time on it than on ChatGPT. On Monday, it filed for bankruptcy.
Two weeks earlier, Character.ai was still launching things: two new chat styles and a cheaper $4.99 plan. The company told its users in a blog post, and their subscriptions kept billing.
The first offer came from Disney, the same Disney that once sent Character.ai a cease-and-desist over chatbots of Elsa and Darth Vader, then hired Character.ai's chief executive 24 days before the filing.
Five years earlier, two Google engineers had walked out to ship the chatbot Google would not. Millions of young people talked to it, some of them at 2am. Google paid billions to take the founders back.
This is the whole Silicon Valley movie. Disney is bidding on the ending.