companies

Character Technologies

Character.AI is a platform for creating and chatting with customizable AI-generated characters via text, voice, and video.

Character.AI was founded in 2021 by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, former Google Brain/LaMDA researchers, and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The company builds a conversational AI platform that lets users create and talk to customizable AI "characters" for roleplay, companionship, entertainment, and productivity. The company raised a $150 million Series A round in March 2023 led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing total disclosed funding to about $193 million. In August 2024, Google signed a $2.7 billion licensing agreement for Character.AI's technology and hired co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, along with other researchers, back into Google DeepMind; Character.AI continued operating independently, with general counsel Dominic Perella becoming interim CEO. As of 2026, Character.AI has roughly 285 employees and remains one of the most widely used consumer AI chat platforms, while continuing to face lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny over user safety, particularly involving minors.

Founded

2022

Headquarters

Redwood City, United States

Sector

consumer