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Character.AI

Consumer AI chatbot platform for conversing with millions of user-created AI characters.
AI 📍 Menlo Park, CA Founded 2021
Current Valuation
$1.0B
as of 2023-Q1
UNICORN

IPO Outlookprivate

Is Character.AI going public?
No. Character.AI is private and has not filed to go public. There is no S-1 on file.
What is Character.AI's valuation in 2026?
Character.AI is valued at $1.0B as of 2023-Q1, set by its Google reverse-acqui-hire (licensing deal) ($2.7B, Aug 2024). That is the last confirmed mark, not a live price — private shares do not trade continuously.
Has Character.AI filed an S-1?
No public S-1 is on file for Character.AI.
Who are Character.AI's investors?
Character.AI's investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Google, SV Angel, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross.
Answers are derived from the roster record shown on this page — filing status, last round and confirmed marks. Where the record is silent, the answer says so rather than guessing.
Character.AI runs a consumer chatbot platform with ~45M monthly users conversing with millions of user-created AI characters. In August 2024, Google paid $2.7B in a reverse-acqui-hire that licensed Character.AI's technology and brought founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas to Google DeepMind — the company itself remains independent and operating under CEO Dominic Perella, with $50M in 2025 revenue. Per The Information, Character.AI has discussed a sale or new funding round in 2025.

Company Profile

CEO
Dominic Perella
Founded
2021
HQ
Menlo Park, CA
Employees
~150
Total Raised
$193M
Est. Revenue
$50M (2025)
Growth
+66% YoY
Last Round
Google reverse-acqui-hire (licensing deal) — $2.7B (Aug 2024) · Lead: Google
IPO Status
private

Fundraising Status

Google reverse-acqui-hire (licensing deal) · $2.7B · 2y ago
privateTotal raised $193M

Secondary Market

Implied price / share
$20.4
Last round price / share
$34.65
vs last round
-41.1%
Last round price vs secondary price
Last round vs current secondary price per share$34.65Last round$20.40Current
Secondary price return by period
Secondary market period returns3-month+1.9%6-month+8.4%1-year-49.0%All-time-32.0%
Implied per-share price from private secondary transactions, as of Jun 2026. This is a point estimate, not a quote — the feed carries no bid, ask or spread, and a secondary print is evidence of what someone paid on that date rather than a live market. Compare across every tracked name →

Latest Funding Round

RoundAmountDateLead InvestorPost-Money
Google reverse-acqui-hire (licensing deal)$2.7BAug 2024Google

Vertical Intelligence — AI / ML

Open models
0
verified organization
Downloads (30d)
0
across all models
Followers
99
Attributed to Hugging Face organization "Character.AI" as of 2026-08-19. Open-weights footprint only — closed-model usage is not publicly measurable. Verify on Hugging Face ↗

Talent Signal

Hiring trend
First snapshot
trend accrues with monthly sweeps
Open roles
13
via ashby
Product-build share
100%
engineering, research, product, design
Trajectory
steady
heavy product build — 100% of open roles are product-building functions (engineering/research/product) — 5 of 13 open roles are engineering.
Actively hiring with no tracked executive churn.
Open roles by month
Open roles by month13Aug '26
Open roles by function
Open roles by functionEngineering5Research4Product3Data & ML1
product-building   go-to-market / G&A
Machine Learning Infrastructure EngineerResearch Engineer, Post-Training (All Industry Levels)Software Engineer, Core ProductSoftware Engineer, BackendSoftware Engineer, MonetizationSoftware Engineer, Backend/Applied ML (Safety & Integrity)
Counted from Character.AI's live job board as of 2026-08-17; role functions classified from posting titles. Open-role counts are an activity signal, not headcount. Refreshed monthly.

Founders & Key People

Noam ShazeerDaniel De Freitas

Investors

Andreessen Horowitz · Google · SV Angel · Nat Friedman · Daniel Gross

Products

  • Character.AI (web + mobile chatbot platform)
  • User-created AI characters
  • AI roleplay and companion experiences

Competitors

Replika · Inflection AI · OpenAI (ChatGPT) · Meta AI Studio
aiconsumer aichatbotscompanion aigoogle-affiliated
Private-company numbers are not real-time. Reflects publicly disclosed valuations from press releases, news reports, and tender offers as of 2023-Q1. Refreshed quarterly.