Character.AI is starting a new chapter after signing a $2.7 billion licensing deal with Google. The licensing deal includes CEO Noam Shazeer returning to the search giant. We hired Erin Teague, a former YouTube executive with global head of sports movies and product management, as chief product officer.
Teague has worked at Google since 2016 and will join Character.AI next week. She also previously served as technical advisor to SVP for Search, Ads, Maps, Gemini, Assistant, Shopping and Payments. Recently,
“Character.AI sets a new standard for how everyday users interact with AI, pioneering personalized and engaging AI experiences at scale,” Teague said in a statement. “We look forward to building on this unparalleled platform to innovate and design new features that will entertain and delight.”
In August, the company announced that Shazeer would be returning to Google. Another co-founder, Daniel de Freitas, also joined Google along with 30 other researchers.
Following these departures, Dominic Perera, Character.AI's interim CEO and general counsel, told TechCrunch that the company now has about 100 employees and is focused on consumer-facing products rather than pursuing general artificial intelligence. He said he will focus entirely on AI solutions. The departing employees are primarily focused on pre-training models, while the remaining employees at Character.AI are primarily focused on engineering, product, and post-training models and tuning.
Teague is the company's first major hire since its co-founders left for Google. Character.AI said it will continue to search for new executives, including a CEO, to replace Perera.
Character.AI Products and Roadmap
The company has bought out all of its investors and is now fully employee-owned. No VCs own shares in Character.AI. The board of directors consists of a16z and one other employee.
“I think we will go to market sometime next year and raise money with a new venture capital partner to invest in the company and get additional governance, partnerships and thought leadership,” Perera said. he said.
Character.AI, which allows users to create and control a variety of AI-powered characters, currently has more than 20 million monthly users, doubling year-over-year. The platform currently has over 100 million characters.
In June, the company launched a feature that allows users to summon and converse with AI characters. The company said its users have made more than 107 million calls to date, with 40% of users making at least one call.
Perella added that Character.AI's characters can already talk to people through text and voice, but the company is also exploring other avenues.
The service's $9.99 c.ai+ subscription is one steady source of revenue. However, the company is not currently focused on revenue generation and is instead focused on growth.
Character.AI said that a number of companies have approached the startup to enhance their characters, and that it is considering some of these partnerships, but Perella is unsure if there are any specifics. was not disclosed.
“Our vision is that the next big consumer platform will be one that personalizes user interests in a way that previous generations of algorithmic feeds could not,” Perera said. Ta.