The facts
Character.AI at a glance.
Read Oct 20, 2026. Valuations and amounts are copied as each source states them; a figure that is only reported (talks, or people familiar with the deal) is labeled as reported.
- Kind of company
- Agents and consumer AIAI agents that do tasks for people and businesses, and new consumer AI products.
- Based in
- United States
- Founded
- 2021TechCrunch, May 31, 2023
- Last closed-round valuation
- $1B$1 billion (TechCrunch, May 31, 2023)
- What it has shipped
- Has a product
Founders
- Noam Shazeer: previously led a Google research team that built LaMDA (with De Freitas) (TechCrunch, May 31, 2023)
- Daniel De Freitas: previously led a Google research team that built LaMDA (with Shazeer) (TechCrunch, May 31, 2023)
The company "has initiated a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy process to facilitate a court-supervised sale of the company", citing "significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwinds"; it says the platform remains up and that it will be wound down if no bid comes in. Oct 12, 2026
Character.AI (company-reported), Oct 12, 2026
What it has built
Shipped, or not yet.
“Has a product” is what our search found: something the public can use or buy, a model or API, research only, or nothing public.
1 round
Funding, as reported.
Every round we found, with the amount, valuation and investors as the source states them.
| When | Round | Amount | Valuation | Investors named | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Series A | $150 million | $1 billion | Andreessen Horowitz (lead) | TechCrunch |
Our note
Worth knowing.
Our note: This is an older funding story (2023) that now ends in a Chapter 11 sale process. We did not fetch the court docket. The 2024 Google licensing and hiring deal, the lawsuits over harm to minors, and the under-18 chat ban are widely reported, but the outlets that carried them (The Verge, NYT, Ars Technica) were blocked to our fetcher, so we could not verify them here.
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