Established in 2021 by AI researchers and former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, Character.AI offers critical conversational AI technology to help people make their everyday tasks easier and solve complex societal issues
Character.AI secures $150m in a Series A funding round. (Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)
Character.AI has raised $150m in a Series A funding round at a valuation of $1bn for its conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform.
The funding round was led by US-based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
It also saw the participation from the company’s existing investors, including GitHub former CEO Nat Friedman, SV Angel, Elad Gil, and A Capital.
A16z general partner Sarah Wang said: “Character.AI is rapidly and dramatically advancing generative AI, with the potential to transform how humans connect not just with AI, but more broadly reinvent how we interact with technology as a whole in our everyday lives.”
With the funding, Character.AI expects to expand its compute abilities to bring a more sophisticated model with advanced reasoning and increased accuracy.
It is anticipated to provide users with new features and capabilities as well as to grow the company’s engineering team.
Established in 2021 by AI researchers and former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, Character.AI offers critical conversational AI technology to help people make their everyday tasks easier and solve complex societal issues.
It provides users with the option to develop a fully-customisable and personalised AI companion with a unique personality and values.
In addition, the firm announced the release of an early preview of C1.2, which is its new, smarter, and more helpful model.
C1.2 is said to bring in new productivity capabilities, building on the entertainment, roleplay, and emotional support of the C1.1 model.
De Freitas said: “Our world-class team of engineers continue to develop new frontiers in large language models and AI, bringing together the EQ and IQ to deliver an unparalleled and personalized experience to each user.
“Whether you’re looking for productivity, entertainment, or a supportive friend, Character.AI is here for you, ready to assist and support you every step of the way.
“Character.AI is proud to be a full-stack AI company, meaning we do everything from training the language models to building the user interface. This gives Character.AI the power to create personalised experiences no other AI can match.”