Discussion

• @hilaryamason Hilary Mason on threads

  Of course it's self-aggrandizing, that's what social media is for.  ;) ...but if it's so easy to create good products with ML systems, why are 99% of them (including, IMHO, character.ai, and Google's attempt at generative search) such shit? …

• @paul_rietschka Paul Rietschka on threads

  Not calling out the person who posted this re: the Character c-suite abandoning ship as I like/respect them (and don't do so in comments, damnit), but this is absolutely delusional, likely self-aggrandizing, and wholly wrong.  There's no talent shortage in the field. …

• @hilaryamason Hilary Mason on threads

  Google's aquihire of Character.AI's founders shows a few things: 1.  Companionship chatbots, especially ones that aren't sexually explicit, have a limited audience.  Chat only takes you so far as a product experience.  Only a small percentage of people will spend a ton of time in…

• @paul_rietschka Paul Rietschka on threads

  The LLM market was never a space ripe for startups, nor is it a space brimming with opportunity.  —  Have you used Character's product?  I have not, and I can confidently say you have not, either.  —  There just aren't products in the space, period. https://techcrunch.com/...

• @benedictevans Benedict Evans on threads

  This is just begging for competition regulators to make an example of someone.

• @crumbler Casey Newton on threads

  The year of non-acquisition acquisitions continues

• @alexheath Alex Heath on threads

  Character.AI is nothing without its people https://www.theverge.com/...

• @technicallymims Christopher Mims on threads

  just more and more evidence every day that it's almost impossible to be a startup in this space and build your own models  —  also not that great being a startup that's just a wrapper on other models  —  RE: https://www.threads.net/...

• @yingxiao Ying Xiao on x

  Everyone knows that @NoamShazeer is a genius, but one thing that most people don't know is how kind and honest he is. His treatment of *all* employees in the events today was exceptionally fair and generous. 10/10 would work for him again.

• @theomarcu Theodor Marcu on x

  Character AI was early, but that was not enough to win in this category In hindsight they will be regarded as the eWorld/myspace to facebook/instagram

• @ns123abc Nik on x

  google won, it's over [image]

• @powerbottomdad1 @powerbottomdad1 on x

  literally how much would they have to pay him to leave one of the hottest ai companies? 50m a year? more? whats the incentive for him outside money? more access to compute? [image]

• @bilawalsidhu Bilawal Sidhu on x

  Character AI is #8 on the App Store in the entertainment category, ahead of Disney Plus and Prime Video. It's incredibly popular with Gen-Z, a user base that Google cares a lot about. In exchange, Character AI now has the support of a hyperscaler sugar daddy. Because you gotta [i…

• @atroyn Anton on x

  character ai's users really want the models to be horny. noam really really doesn't want the models to be horny. google have never made a single horny product in the entire history of the company; he's going to be safe from horny there.

• @lulumeservey Lulu Cheng Meservey on x

  Speaking of leaks, Character AI could be an interesting case study I could be wrong, but my read is that Character has employees who are leaking, maybe as a negotiating tactic with Google A thread of breadcrumbs: [image]

• @nikunj Nikunj Kothari on x

  Getting a bunch of DMs, apparently people don't seem to fully grok what's happening. Here's the gist: - Current FTC team has made acquisitions basically impossible - Large incumbents want good AI talent to shepherd their AI plans - Incumbents strike a deal with the founders and

• @alexeheath Alex Heath on x

  Google's deal to hire back the founders of https://character.ai/ (and their research team) is highly unusual by traditional M&A standards, but not really that weird when you consider what Microsoft did with Inflection and Amazon did with Adept recently. In this case: Character [i…

• @nikunj Nikunj Kothari on x

  Inflection (Microsoft), Adept (Amazon) and now Character (Google). These examples _will_ make early employees question why they should join high growth startups in the first place since they are the biggest losers of these transactions. And that's a catastrophe in itself.

• @theomarcu Theodor Marcu on x

  I continue to believe that AI character chat is a Facebook/instagram level opportunity for building a company, but the winner will look more like a new generation zuck rather than a seasoned 10x researcher and engineer

• @oriolvinyalsml Oriol Vinyals on x

  It was always great fun to discuss ideas and results with @NoamShazeer and @dan_defr Welcome back & let's go! ♊️♊️🚀🚀 https://techcrunch.com/...

• @sanhestpasmoi Victor Sanh on x

  is someone writing the tutorial “how to acquire an ai startup without annoying the ftc”?

• @rachelmetz Rachel Metz on x

  weird, wild times for @character_ai: its co-founders, who *left google* to start the AI chatbot startup in 2021, are (re)joining Google in a larger deal that lets the search giant license the startup's technology. (got that? good!) https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @technology

• @sarahdingwang Sarah Wang on x

  Congrats to @NoamShazeer and the entire @character_ai team. It's been a privilege to be on this journey with you this past year. Excited to see what the amazing team at @character_ai builds next as they continue to bring personalized AI to its users all over the world.

• @garymarcus Gary Marcus on x

  Hot take on https://character.ai/'s Inflection-style quasi-acquisition by Google: Stability AI is struggling; Inflection's CEO abandoned ship, moving to Microsoft; now CharacterAI's CEO and President did the same, moving to Google, leaving behind many employees. Meanwhile [image]

• @byjulialove Julia Love on x

  Attention - and a business model - are all you need? @rachelmetz https://www.bloomberg.com/...

• @lulumeservey Lulu Cheng Meservey on x

  If the Character leakers were really playing 4D chess, they would have planted the xAI story a couple days ago to create bargaining leverage in quickly closing the deal with Google. And if they were paranoid about the Google deal falling through as it did with Wiz recently, they …

• @luke_metro @luke_metro on x

  Being an early employee at lots of these AI model startups is starting to look like a questionable deal [image]

• @mikeknoop Mike Knoop on x

  CharacterAI/Google getting in on the “don't call it an acquisition” AI deal game. I've heard several more deals like this are in the works. https://techcrunch.com/...

• @aravsrinivas Aravind Srinivas on x

  Big win for Google in its competition with OpenAI on scaling and infrastructure. [image]

• @pitdesi Sheel Mohnot on x

  Character is doing an acquihire licensing deal with Google, similar to Inflection>Microsoft & Adept>Amazon... cofounders join bigco, co survives under new leaders Character investors get 2.5x, Inflection 1.5x, not sure about Adept. prob good for founders, meh for investors [image…

• @zck Zak Kukoff on x

  Large-scale M&A is dead (thanks Lina Khan). Instead, we're in a epidemic of talent heists — acquisitions in all but name focused on buying out founders: - Character (Google) - Inflection (Microsoft) - Adept (Amazon)

• @luke_metro @luke_metro on x

  AI founders leaving research labs to start their own companies [image]

• @sarthakgh Sar Haribhakti on x

  “M&A” becoming “hiring” is the most hilarious tech trend that has taken on so quickly

• @kyliebytes Kylie Robison on x

  Google and https://character.ai/ vs Microsoft and Inflection vs the FTC, coming to a headline near you soon

• @sumitgup Sumit Gupta on x

  Looks like https://character.ai/ got acqui-hired? Not sure if this was a good outcome or ok-like. Seems like the GenerativeAI startup space is starting to collapse without real revenue https://techcrunch.com/...

• @mattturck Matt Turck on x

  I mean, at this point, if you haven't been hired away by a Mag 7 company, are you even an AI founder [image]

• @kyliebytes Kylie Robison on x

  Crazy twist of events — Noam Shazeer, who left Google after coauthoring the famous “Attention Is All You Need” paper so he could cofound the $5 billion startup https://character.ai/ is now back at Google on the DeepMind team 🤯

• @nathanbenaich Nathan Benaich on x

  the large ai model startup homecoming (read pseudo m&a by way of non-exclusive licensing payment to shareholders) continues: “I am super excited to return to Google and work as part of the Google DeepMind team. I am so proud of everything we built at Character. over the last 3 [i…

• @alex @alex on x

  so is this another mercy kill?

• r/MachineLearning r on reddit

  [D] Another flashy startup folds?  Thoughts on Character.Ai founders going back to Google

• r/singularity r on reddit

  Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer returns to Google as the tech giant invests in the AI company

• r/mlscaling r on reddit

  “Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer [and some staff] returns to Google as the tech giant invests in the AI company” (2nd Inflection-style acquihire as scaling shakeout continues)

• r/CharacterAI r on reddit

  Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer returns to Google as the tech giant invests in the AI company

• @edzitron Ed Zitron on x

  I mean, it sure seems like Character is dying or dead? What's the point of this company if they no longer use their own models and switch to open source ones? https://www.theinformation.com/ ... [image]

• @swyx @swyx on x

  Ok after some reading whining about the broken founding employee contract I actually did some research: - Adept stock is getting bought at par - Inflection stock getting bought at 1.5x - Character stock getting bought at 2.5x I think this means employees are being at least made

• @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x

  Amazon & Adept AI, Microsoft & Inflection AI and now Google & Character AI. Technically not an acquisition but they pay off the investors and hire away the CEO and all the key people. This is an incredible antitrust loophole if they all get away with it. https://www.theinformatio…

• @hkarthik Karthik Hariharan on x

  Big Tech is buying AI talent without actually buying the companies they started. Google just hired the CEO of https://character.ai/ and several of their team back to Google. On paper, it's not an acquihire, Google is licensing some of the company's tech. Investors plowed

• @dylan522p Dylan Patel on x

  VCs keep taking L's from big tech, the one they love to say they will disrupt. First Microsoft Inflection Then Amazon Adept Now Google Character Who is next? Meta Mistral? TBF, Inflection and Character especially have had pretty good returns for the shareholders.

• @amir Amir Efrati on x

  Andreessen and Greycroft are going to end up making a little money from the Google-Character acquihire. https://www.theinformation.com/ ... @KalleyHuang [image]

• @bryce Bryce Roberts on x

  “a little money” on a billion dollar outcome. Welcome to the new reality of venture...