companies

Chai Research Corp.

Runs CHAI, a crowdsourced AI chat app where users create characters and outside developers submit competing LLMs that power them.

Chai Research was founded in 2021 by William Beauchamp, a Cambridge-educated former quantitative trader who began prototyping the idea in Cambridge, England, in 2020 before relocating the company to Palo Alto, California. Co-founders Thomas Rialan and Rob Irvine joined him in building a platform that lets anyone create an AI character and chat with it, with characters powered by a rotating mix of in-house and externally submitted language models rather than a single proprietary model. The company's distinguishing bet is treating model selection like a competition: outside teams can submit their own fine-tuned LLMs, which are ranked using feedback from CHAI's own user base and blended into the models that actually serve conversations. That approach, combined with GPU partnerships with CoreWeave and AMD, has helped CHAI scale to a large daily user base and, according to company-reported figures, tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue.

Founded

2021

Headquarters

Palo Alto, United States

Sector

consumer