Google Invests in Character.AI Chatbot

Character AI

Google is reportedly investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Character.AI, a rapidly growing AI chatbot startup. This move highlights Google's commitment to developing innovative AI solutions and its potential to compete with other tech giants in the AI chatbot space.

Google Invests in Character.AI Chatbot

Google is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in AI chatbot standout Character.AI, just weeks after the world's third-largest cloud company reportedly agreed to invest $2 billion in AI startup Anthropic. The move shows that the productivity AI battle between tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon will continue into 2024.

 

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is in talks to tie up with Character.AI to invest big money in the AI chatbot startup, Reuters reported. The AI startup was founded by former Google employees Daniel de Freitas and Noam Shazier.

 

Character.AI provides chatbot services based on Large Linguistic Models (LLM) that generate responses and open conversations with users. The service was availed in September 2022, following a $150 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz in March, valuing the startup at $1 billion.

 

The Menlo Park, California-based startup currently uses Google Cloud infrastructure and Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to train its AI models.

Bard, Google's GenAI interactive chatbot, was available earlier this year.

 

Character AI Google connection

 The startup was founded by two prominent Google engineers who were part of the company's AI DeepMind projects.

 

Character.AI CEO Shazier spent more than 21 years at Google as a lead software engineer before co-founding Character.AI with De Freitas in late 2021. De Freitas, president of Character.AI, spent nearly a decade as a senior research engineer at Google. .

 

Both were released in 2020 on Google's LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications) dialogue system and language technology. Breakthrough Technologies is a collection of LLMs that work together to achieve a variety of productive AI tasks.

 

Google's $2 billion Anthropic bet

In late October, Google announced it would invest up to $2 billion in AI startup Anthropic, including an initial investment of $500 million.

 

Anthropic AI offers a chatbot cloud that competes with the chatbot owner's OpenAI. Cloud GeneAi was launched and the core model is based on the company's AI systems learning research. OpenAI is heavily supported by Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI.

 

Microsoft, Amazon and Google AI startups are competing to leverage their infrastructure and cloud services for AI technology and innovation.

 

Like Character.AI, Anthropic leverages Google's cloud and TPU services.

 

Google's heavy investment in Anthropic and Character.AI reflects the tech giant's desire to become a leader in the creative AI market. The world's biggest IT giants - Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia and many others - are investing billions in AI startups in the JNAI race, which, after accelerating in 2023, shows no signs of slowing down next year. show