Pavlo Gonchar | Lightrocket | Getty Images
The founders of one of the most popular artificial intelligence startups Character.AI are back Google along with other team members.
Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, in addition to some members of Character.AI’s research team, are joining Google’s AI unit DeepMind, the companies said on Friday.
Character.AI uses large language models to allow users to create chatbots and interact with those created by other users. The startup hit a $1 billion valuation as the artificial intelligence boom took off last year. Character.AI didn’t generate revenue at the time, but said it is considering offering a subscription service in the future.
The two founders left Google in 2021 after the search giant According to reports rejected their attempts to try to convince Google to promote a chatbot. They went on to launch Character.AI in the same year.
Freitas criticized the company’s slow pace, telling Axios last March, “There’s some overlap, but we’re confident that Google will never do anything fun,” about Bard, which is now a Gemini chatbot.
Character.AI will grant Google a non-exclusive license to use its current large language model, or LLM technology, the company’s suspension states. “This agreement will provide increased funding for Character.AI to continue to grow and focus on creating personalized AI products for users around the world,” he says.
“In the last couple of years, however, the landscape has changed – many more pre-trained models are now available,” the blog post continues. “Given these changes, we see an advantage in greater use of third-party LLMs alongside our own. This allows us to devote even more resources to continuing education and creating new product experiences for our growing user base.”
Alphabet, which faces criticism that OpenAI’s ChatGPT rode the AI chatbot craze, has instituted changes to its organization to move faster to market. Late last year, Google was According to reports in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Character.AI.
“I am very excited to return to Google and work as part of the Google DeepMind team,” Shazeer said in a statement on Friday. “I’m so proud of everything we’ve built at Character.AI over the past 3 years. I’m confident that the funds from Google’s non-exclusive licensing agreement along with the incredible Character.AI team position Character.AI for continued success in the future.”
A Google spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC: “We are extremely excited to welcome back Noam, a prominent researcher in machine learning, who is joining the Google DeepMind research team, along with a small number of his colleagues.”
The move also comes amid a competitive landscape for talent and artificial intelligence, driving companies to form partnerships against a tough regulatory landscape that has put scrutiny on mergers and acquisitions. Britain’s competition watchdog said earlier this week it was looking into Google’s partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, for example.
On March, Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of AI startup DeepMind that Google acquired in 2014, and much of its staff to lead AI initiatives. Suleiman became executive vice president and managing director of Microsoft AI, reporting to CEO Satya Nadella. Last month, UK regulators opened a merger investigation into Microsoft’s hiring of staff.
