Google Hires Character.AI Cofounders and Licenses Its Models
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has agreed to pay a licensing fee [non-paywalled link] to chatbot maker Character.AI for its models and will hire its cofounders and many of its researchers, Character's leaders told staff on Friday. The leaders told Character staff that investors would be bought out at a valuation of about $88 per share, the leaders said in a meeting. That's about 2.5 times the value of shares in Character's 2023 Series A, which valued the company at $1 billion, they said.
The Character employees joining Google will work on its Gemini AI efforts, they said. Character will switch to open-source models such as Meta Platforms' Llama 3.1 to power its products, rather than its in-house models, they said. The deal follows a string of similar arrangements by other well-funded artificial intelligence startups. AI developers Adept and Inflection have both effectively sold themselves to Amazon and Microsoft, respectively, in the last five months despite raising considerable capital.
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2024-08-02 18:51:00
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npub1rk3j5fc4ew5w9zd7kx5zfqt04tew0kan9swrr63ctn6k8wp8f65qwd8w8zPublished at
2024-08-02 18:51:00Event JSON
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"content": "Google Hires Character.AI Cofounders and Licenses Its Models\n\nAn anonymous reader shares a report: Google has agreed to pay a licensing fee [non-paywalled link] to chatbot maker Character.AI for its models and will hire its cofounders and many of its researchers, Character's leaders told staff on Friday. The leaders told Character staff that investors would be bought out at a valuation of about $88 per share, the leaders said in a meeting. That's about 2.5 times the value of shares in Character's 2023 Series A, which valued the company at $1 billion, they said. \n\nThe Character employees joining Google will work on its Gemini AI efforts, they said. Character will switch to open-source models such as Meta Platforms' Llama 3.1 to power its products, rather than its in-house models, they said. The deal follows a string of similar arrangements by other well-funded artificial intelligence startups. AI developers Adept and Inflection have both effectively sold themselves to Amazon and Microsoft, respectively, in the last five months despite raising considerable capital.\n\u003ca href=\"http://twitter.com/home?status=Google+Hires+Character.AI+Cofounders+and+Licenses+Its+Models%3A+https%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F24%2F08%2F02%2F1851252%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F24%2F08%2F02%2F1851252%2Fgoogle-hires-characterai-cofounders-and-licenses-its-models%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\n\n\nhttps://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/02/1851252/google-hires-characterai-cofounders-and-licenses-its-models?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon\u0026utm_medium=feed\n at Slashdot.\n\nhttps://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/02/1851252/google-hires-characterai-cofounders-and-licenses-its-models?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon\u0026utm_medium=feed",
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