Character Technologies, Inc.
Headquarters
Menlo Park, CAFounded
2021CEO / Founder
Noam ShazeerEmployees
201-500Funding
Series C — $693MProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
6.8/10Website
character.ai/
Profile updated
About Character Technologies, Inc.
Character Technologies, Inc., operating as Character.AI, is an AI company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It was founded in 2021 by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, both former Google engineers who worked on large language model research, including contributions to the Transformer architecture and LaMDA. The company's core product is a web and mobile platform that allows users to create, customize, and interact with AI-driven personas through open-ended dialogue.
Character.AI's platform hosts millions of user-created characters spanning entertainment, education, companionship, and role-playing use cases. Users can build characters with defined personalities and backstories, and the platform supports multi-character conversations. The service attracted a large consumer audience, particularly among younger demographics, and became one of the most-visited AI consumer applications in the world by session time metrics in 2023.
The company raised a $150 million Series A round in March 2023 at a $1 billion valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz. It subsequently raised additional funding, bringing total disclosed funding to approximately $693 million. In 2024, Google entered into a licensing agreement with Character.AI and hired back Shazeer and De Freitas, though the company continued to operate independently under Shazeer, who returned as CEO.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by Character Technologies, Inc.
All products by Character Technologies, Inc. reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
How Our Review Panel Scores Character Technologies, Inc.
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Character Technologies, Inc.'s product on their own terms. They disagreed by 2.0 points — The Decision Maker was the hardest to convince, The Power User the most positive.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who Character Technologies, Inc. competes with, and how they differ.
Replika centers on a single, persistent, user-customized companion with an emotional-support angle, versus Character.AI's model of many switchable, user-created characters.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedTalkie AI uses a collectible-card, feed-style discovery UI skewed toward fandom and casual sessions, competing for the same younger roleplay-chat audience as Character.AI.
Chai runs a large community-built bot library with fewer content restrictions than Character.AI and a simpler free/paid tier, targeting high-volume open conversation.
PolyBuzz (rebranded from Poly.AI in 2025) competes on scale — tens of millions of characters plus bundled voice and image generation — for the same roleplay/anime-leaning user base.
Company Timeline
Key milestones in Character Technologies, Inc.'s history, with sources.
- Milestone
Google and Character.AI agree to mediate settlements in five wrongful-death/harm lawsuits
Character.AI, its founders and Google agreed to mediated settlements in five lawsuits filed in Florida, Colorado, New York and Texas alleging the chatbot platform contributed to teen self-harm and suicide; terms were not disclosed and liability was not admitted.
techcrunch.com - Milestone
Announced ban on open-ended chat for under-18 users
Character.AI announced it would remove open-ended chatbot conversations for users under 18 by November 25, 2025, following lawsuits and lawmaker pressure over teen safety; it became the first major chatbot provider to take this step.
euronews.com - Milestone
Garcia v. Character Technologies wrongful-death lawsuit filed
Megan Garcia filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in the U.S. District Court (M.D. Fla.) against Character Technologies, its founders and Google, alleging her 14-year-old son's suicide followed prolonged, sexualized chatbot interactions; the case became a landmark suit over AI companion safety.
nbcnews.com - Partnership
Google licensing deal — $2.7B, non-exclusive tech license plus rehire of founders
Google agreed to pay about $2.7 billion for a non-exclusive license to Character.AI's technology, and co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas plus roughly 30 researchers rejoined Google DeepMind; Character.AI itself was not acquired and continued operating independently.
cnbc.com - Funding
Series A — $150M led by Andreessen Horowitz, $1B valuation
Character.AI raised $150 million led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $1 billion valuation, reaching unicorn status roughly a year after launch and before generating revenue.
pulse2.com - Founded
Founded by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas
Former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, co-authors of the original Transformer research, left Google in 2021 to found Character.AI.
pulse2.com
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