Character.AI told staff that investors will be bought out at a valuation of ~2.5x its $1B 2023 valuation, and it plans to adopt open-source models for products
and what we don't X: @swyx : 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 Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : 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.theinformation.com/ ... Ed Zitron / @edzitron : 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] Karthik Hariharan / @hkarthik : 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 Dylan Patel / @dylan522p : 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 Efrati / @amir : Andreessen and Greycroft are going to end up making a little money from the Google-Character acquihire. https://www.theinformation.com/ ... @KalleyHuang [image] Bryce Roberts / @bryce : “a little money” on a billion dollar outcome. Welcome to the new reality of venture... Forums: Msmash / Slashdot : Google Hires Character.AI Cofounders and Licenses Its Models