Ex-Google workers’ A.I. chatbot startup valued at $1 billion after Andreessen Horowitz funding

Character.AI, a synthetic intelligence start-up based by two former Google workers, is capitalizing on enterprise capitalists’ unquenchable thirst for offers in expertise’s hottest area.

The 2-year-old firm mentioned on Thursday that it raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation in a funding spherical led by Andreessen Horowitz. Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, who helped created the structure utilized in standard chatbots, left Google in 2021 and based Character.AI the identical yr.

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Character.AI mentioned in a press launch asserting the funding that its expertise offers “customers the flexibility to create a fully-customizable and personalised AI companion with a definite persona and values.”

The financing spherical follows main efforts by Google and Microsoft to develop and embed chatbot software program into key merchandise, bringing AI-generated responses into issues like search, paperwork and electronic mail. Large tech firms and VCs are dashing into the market after Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched ChatGPT to the general public in November and noticed the free experimental service go viral.

In January, Microsoft introduced a ChatGPT-integrated Bing search engine. Earlier this week, Google launched a check model of its chatbot Bard.

“There are some overlaps, however we’re assured Google won’t ever do something enjoyable,” Freitas advised Axios, concerning Bard. “As a result of we labored there.”

Character.AI mentioned the contemporary capital will enable it to broaden its “compute talents leading to a extra refined mannequin with superior reasoning and larger accuracy.” The cash will assist the corporate develop its 22-person workforce and add technical talents. The corporate mentioned it is nearing 100 million website visits per 30 days, “a four-fold enhance in two months.”

The 10-figure valuation for a corporation that is reportedly pre-revenue is paying homage to different just lately hyped applied sciences like crypto (or extra broadly Web3) and social audio. Andreessen Horowitz has been a major participant in driving up costs in each markets. The agency introduced a $4.5 billion crypto fund in mid-2022 because the digital forex market was in freefall. A yr earlier, it added to its funding in audio app Clubhouse, valuing the early-stage startup at $Four billion. The Clubhouse buzz rapidly quieted because the post-lockdown financial system reopened.

Character.AI did not present further remark.

Sarah Wang, a accomplice at Andreessen Horowitz, mentioned within the launch that “Character.AI is quickly and dramatically advancing generative AI, with the potential to remodel how people join not simply with AI, however extra broadly reinvent how we work together with expertise as a complete in our on a regular basis lives.”

Different buyers embody former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, A Capital and SV Angel.

Jill Chase, who leads AI investments at Alphabet’s late-stage enterprise group Capital G, beforehand advised CNBC that Shazeer is the kind of one that “can go into their basement for 18 months and alter the world.”

“I’ve spent a number of time with Noam,” she mentioned. “He’s an distinctive technologist.”

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