For all intents and purposes Character.ai was acquired in August 2024, and this is just the mess leftover from their run around antitrust regulation.
The company filing for chapter 11 today is shell that was left after Google "hi-quired" (the opposite of acqui-hired) the founding team. The shareholders got paid ($2.7B from Google), the founding team moved on, and what's left is the corporate structure and whoever Google did not want.
It sucks for the people left over (but then again, it also sucks to be part of the team that's laid off in a merger). It's also a terrible practice that I hope the Justice department and the CFTC will put an end to soon.
Not clear that this is true financially. Of course, it sucks to be at a sinking ship, but in most of these the people left behind are compensated as both employees and shareholders.
I think the original meaning of hi-quired was hijacked-acquired, in the sense that the company was acquihired, all the critical talent transitioned to a more important G project and that's it.
I think they mean rather than acqui-hire, acquiring in order to hire the team. They hired the team they wanted individually to specifically avoid acquiring this company.
Poaching is when one illegally hunts wildlife. People are not animals, and hiring them is not harming them. It is a terrible term to apply to human beings.
character.ai - the tobacco company AI equivalent - who's business model it was to lull users in with highly-unstable AI 'friends', which was a bad idea from the start as most normal thinking people would assume, yet predatory VCs funded that shitshow and that far too long, and many scandals and even suicides followed from it that could have been avoided. Companies and their executives must be held personally accountable for knowingly detrimental effects on society and their users - that's the only way regulation for the benefit of users actually works.
It's a real disgrace that companies like Google and Disney acquired people from them - it displays those companies' true values and motives: profit at any fckin human prize.
Disney. You mean the company that hid an image of topless woman in The Rescuers (1977) movie and from which many child stars have gone off the rails in later life, main actor kissing a 11 old in Blank Check (1994), and the 2026 lawsuit by Raquel Lee Bolleau among other scandals that anyone as a parent would hope not to be there
> the company that hid an image of topless woman in The Rescuers (1977) movie
Disney is guilty of a lot of crap—everything else that you mentioned and much more—but that specific instance wasn’t their fault and they acted to correct it once they knew.
Again, I’m not here to defend Disney, they definitely are rotten, but we can point that out by listing all the things they definitely did badly and on purpose rather than leaning on dubious situations which weaken the argument.
The very same Disney that hired Brian Peck to work on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody immediately upon his release from prison after serving 16 months for sexually abusing Drake Bell while working on Drake & Josh at Nickelodeon.
”Character.ai’s CEO Karandeep Anand is joining Disney in a newly created role as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. Karan expects to be joined by members of Character’s technical team to build on Disney’s impressive technology capabilities to help connect fans worldwide with its beloved stories and characters in new and innovative ways.”
At least Anand has been in the business for like 30 years. I didn't know anything about him but I assumed he was a 25 year old from Stanford that VCs decided to shower money on
Sets up the most vile company preying on lonely people, runs it into the ground - then gets hired to do the exact same thing for a bigger company. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it
He didn't really run it into the ground, this whole bankruptcy thing is just smoke and mirrors to cover the fact that Google basically acquired them ages ago
All the drama in here just because it's a gooning and role play toy.
From what I can tell it was a popular tool with many users, one of the more popular ones among MANY. There are thousands of users using tools like this. Nothing inherently bad about that.
2 years in, the founders and 30 researchers took Google's $2.7b and left. Then they had to ban kids which was probably most of their userbase. Yet they were still putting $1m/mo on the corporate cards with 86 full time bay area employees on
~$278k average base, and almost $100k owed to DoorDash. lol
Sometimes watching the fresh-faced punks make bank while I slave away at a "regular" company for average pay is just demoralizing. It's really about being at the right place, time, and near the right people, isn't it.
> It's really about being at the right place, time, and near the right people, isn't it
It's also about having the right moral flexibility. To be in this particular club, you have to hang out with some people that a bunch of us would really rather not be associated with...
They were clearly in it for the investor perks and not the product, spending away like that.
If you want an unsustainable joyride, then you too can work for a startup headed for chapter 11 (like 8 out of 10 startups).
Also, knowing people in general has never not been valuable. It's arguably the main thing holding most engineers back from success. Plenty of evidence backs this up: Type fewer keys, press more palms.
A lot of that depends on how you do with the birth lottery. The path from Westchester to Stanford is a little easier than from a homeless shelter (that was MY life).
The people making bank are those creating these startups.
Their startups get acquired, or they get acqui-hired because of the founders and core people, who in turn have some pedigree which send strong signals.
If you look at the pattern, it is roughly:
- Top ML/AI researchers from the past 10-15 years
- Top ML/AI engineers from top labs or companies
Those above people were hired by FAANG companies or AI startups.
But most important of all, it isn't a overnight success. Many of these have been going at it for 10+ years now. Of course some are relatively young, as in having joined Anthropic or OpenAI more recently (past few years), and launching their own startup after 2022.
This is the way tech has always been. Or as Carlin said "It's a big club... And you ain't in it."
Occasionally, you can ride their coattails (there will always be rising tides), but if you don't have the right connections and the right degrees from the right universities, you're not invited to the box seat TLA titles of these things...
The odds are much better than state lotteries, and the payout is higher than the stock market, but most of us still need to do our own financial planning instead of socializing the risks of the founder class as they privatize the gains. And yet, each day I get these ludicrous emails from a16z about which startups started by which all star founders wants to hire me for less than I make from passive revenue these days for bread crumbs of equity.
But the thing here is, who needs character.ai in an age of local models and cheap tokens from OpenAI and Anthropic (unless you're very naughty and not shaming, just noting)? High margin role play disrupted by cheap open weight models: how very Clayton Christensen.
Nothing except the $278k average base salary, while living luxuriously at work and probably home too on the startup's expense card, as the $100k door dash bill shows. I bet there were a ton of fancy off sites in Hawaii or wherever.
Meanwhile at $bigco I just got my request to buy a shitty $1k Dell laptop denied because I got one 2 years ago and I have to wait 1 more.
I remember the laptop renewal also was 3 years. Which would have been fine if they didn't have that policy to issue Dell Latitude, end of the barrel hardware Dell itself couldn't sell.
One day I figured nobody forces me to work for such company.
Bullshit. I met a lot of my favorite people in the world working in startups, people I want to stay in contact with for life because they’re good and I enjoy being around them.
There are bad and good people everywhere. I’ve seen new fewer good people at small companies than large or non-tech ones.
The thing is, if you were already in the crowd that gets offers to work at this sort of startup, you could be drawing the same 250k+ to work a normal 9-5 at a FAANG-adjacent
Signing on to a hookers-and-blow startup is a choice a lot of these folks made, not their only route to money
Correction: FAANG salaries are almost always better. You get a lot more equity with startups. It’s a gamble. You’re betting a short term paycut on the company’s success.
But the main reason I’d generally work at startups anyway is because it’s more fun. When something needs to be done, you can’t contact the department that does the thing. You are that department; go figure it out!
And yes, that’s also a lot more pressure, but I wouldn’t trade it for a 9-5 desk job. (Other people absolutely would, and do. I never criticize their decision making. That’s what’s right for them. It’s just not what’s right for me.)
Not familiar with the company. Home page says nothing other than a tag line and a signup to continue. About page does add very little. Their blog provides a little bit of insight, but honestly, I have no clue what they sell or what the value prop is.
Maybe I'm the clueless one, at it seems others are quite familiar with their story.
The company filing for chapter 11 today is shell that was left after Google "hi-quired" (the opposite of acqui-hired) the founding team. The shareholders got paid ($2.7B from Google), the founding team moved on, and what's left is the corporate structure and whoever Google did not want.
It sucks for the people left over (but then again, it also sucks to be part of the team that's laid off in a merger). It's also a terrible practice that I hope the Justice department and the CFTC will put an end to soon.
Not clear that this is true financially. Of course, it sucks to be at a sinking ship, but in most of these the people left behind are compensated as both employees and shareholders.
---
poach (verb) poached; poaching; poaches
Intransitive verb
1. To encroach upon, especially for the purpose of taking something.
2. To trespass for the purpose of stealing game; also, to take game or fish illegally.
Transitive verb
1. To trespass on.
2. a. To take (game or fish) by illegal methods.
How is hiring people "terrible practice"?
Laws aren't real till 2029, at least
It's a real disgrace that companies like Google and Disney acquired people from them - it displays those companies' true values and motives: profit at any fckin human prize.
Disney is guilty of a lot of crap—everything else that you mentioned and much more—but that specific instance wasn’t their fault and they acted to correct it once they knew.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-rescuers-topless/
Again, I’m not here to defend Disney, they definitely are rotten, but we can point that out by listing all the things they definitely did badly and on purpose rather than leaning on dubious situations which weaken the argument.
— https://blog.character.ai/the-next-chapter-of-entertainment-...
From what I can tell it was a popular tool with many users, one of the more popular ones among MANY. There are thousands of users using tools like this. Nothing inherently bad about that.
Nothing wrong with some AI gooning IMO
It's also about having the right moral flexibility. To be in this particular club, you have to hang out with some people that a bunch of us would really rather not be associated with...
If you want an unsustainable joyride, then you too can work for a startup headed for chapter 11 (like 8 out of 10 startups).
Also, knowing people in general has never not been valuable. It's arguably the main thing holding most engineers back from success. Plenty of evidence backs this up: Type fewer keys, press more palms.
Their startups get acquired, or they get acqui-hired because of the founders and core people, who in turn have some pedigree which send strong signals.
If you look at the pattern, it is roughly:
- Top ML/AI researchers from the past 10-15 years - Top ML/AI engineers from top labs or companies
Those above people were hired by FAANG companies or AI startups.
But most important of all, it isn't a overnight success. Many of these have been going at it for 10+ years now. Of course some are relatively young, as in having joined Anthropic or OpenAI more recently (past few years), and launching their own startup after 2022.
This is the way tech has always been. Or as Carlin said "It's a big club... And you ain't in it."
Occasionally, you can ride their coattails (there will always be rising tides), but if you don't have the right connections and the right degrees from the right universities, you're not invited to the box seat TLA titles of these things...
The odds are much better than state lotteries, and the payout is higher than the stock market, but most of us still need to do our own financial planning instead of socializing the risks of the founder class as they privatize the gains. And yet, each day I get these ludicrous emails from a16z about which startups started by which all star founders wants to hire me for less than I make from passive revenue these days for bread crumbs of equity.
But the thing here is, who needs character.ai in an age of local models and cheap tokens from OpenAI and Anthropic (unless you're very naughty and not shaming, just noting)? High margin role play disrupted by cheap open weight models: how very Clayton Christensen.
Meanwhile at $bigco I just got my request to buy a shitty $1k Dell laptop denied because I got one 2 years ago and I have to wait 1 more.
One day I figured nobody forces me to work for such company.
There are bad and good people everywhere. I’ve seen new fewer good people at small companies than large or non-tech ones.
Signing on to a hookers-and-blow startup is a choice a lot of these folks made, not their only route to money
But the main reason I’d generally work at startups anyway is because it’s more fun. When something needs to be done, you can’t contact the department that does the thing. You are that department; go figure it out!
And yes, that’s also a lot more pressure, but I wouldn’t trade it for a 9-5 desk job. (Other people absolutely would, and do. I never criticize their decision making. That’s what’s right for them. It’s just not what’s right for me.)
Maybe I'm the clueless one, at it seems others are quite familiar with their story.
[1] https://character.ai/careers
> Your information continues to be protected under our Privacy Policy, and our data privacy and security practices are unchanged.
Opens Privacy Policy
> 2. How We Use the Information We Collect
> …wall of text covering every use under the sun…
> 3. When We Disclose the Information We Collect
> …wall of text covering effectively anyone and any time…
Translation: yeah you agreed that your data can be sold, and it will be sold.