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
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
Last Round
Google reverse-acqui-hire (licensing deal) — $2.7B (Aug 2024) · Lead: Google
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.