Character.ai goes bankrupt: from $2.7B Google deal to a $20M Disney asset sale
eherrerosj · x · 2026-10-14
Character.ai filed for bankruptcy; Disney is paying $20M for some assets and a perpetual tech license, with the platform shutting down if no buyer keeps it running. Founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas left Google in 2021 after it refused to release Meena; in 2024 Google paid $2.7B to license the tech and rehire them, and Shazeer later jumped to OpenAI within two years. The platform peaked at 20M MAU before teen-safety lawsuits, including a settled case over a 14-year-old's suicide, drove its collapse.
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