posted in Technology
Character.ai has initiated voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy
cross-posted from: https://feddit.online/c/tech@piefed.world/p/2026105/character-ai-has-initiated-voluntary-chapter-11-bankruptcy
blog.character.ai/an-update-on-character-ai/
There’s no surprise here - the founding team already got picked up by Google in a reverse acquihire. What was left was just the corpse.
If you’re trying to take this as a sign of impending AI Business failure, you should look probably elsewhere.
Reverse acquihires should probably be illegal to be honest. It leaves a lot of people out in the cold.
Replying to @VibeSurgeon@piefed.social
Reverse aquihire means no trademarks and no company assets though, right? Just the talent s being hired away. That means the founding team have already noticed that company is going down, otherwise why leave the company you founded?
It means you:
You can do it as a founder as a type of exit where you get paid a whole lot of money.
The bad part is that every other employee at the company basically gets stiffed. The “social contract” of startups is that you forego a big tech-level compensation package in favour of stock options which may provide returns at the point of an exit. In reverse acquihires this social contract is directly violated.