Google is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in AI startup Character.AI that will help the latter train artificial intelligence chatbot models, a report said.
Citing sources who were briefed on the matter, news agency Reuters reported that the investment by Google could be structured as convertible notes and will deepen the existing partnership between the companies. Character.AI currently uses Google’s cloud services and Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to train models.
The talks with Google are ongoing and terms of the deal could change, the sources were cited as saying.
Why Character.AI is popular
Character.AI was founded by former Google employees Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and allows people to chat with virtual versions of celebrities like Billie Eilish, while creating their own chatbots and AI assistants. It is free to use and also offers a subscription model.
The company previously said its website had attracted 100 million monthly visits in the first six months since its launch.
Google’s other investments
Google has been investing in AI startups for a long time. In 2014, the company bought London-based DeepMind, which was recently merged with Google Brain team to form Google DeepMind.
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The company has also invested $2 billion in Anthropic, which also uses Google’s cloud services as well as its latest version of TPUs.
Meanwhile, competitors like Microsoft have also invested billions in OpenAI.
Last week, US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan said that the agency is looking into investments in AI startups to examine whether there are any anti-competitive behaviours.
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Google is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in AI startup Character.AI that will help the latter train artificial intelligence chatbot models, a report said.
Citing sources who were briefed on the matter, news agency Reuters reported that the investment by Google could be structured as convertible notes and will deepen the existing partnership between the companies. Character.AI currently uses Google’s cloud services and Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to train models.
The talks with Google are ongoing and terms of the deal could change, the sources were cited as saying.
Why Character.AI is popular
Character.AI was founded by former Google employees Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and allows people to chat with virtual versions of celebrities like Billie Eilish, while creating their own chatbots and AI assistants. It is free to use and also offers a subscription model.
The company previously said its website had attracted 100 million monthly visits in the first six months since its launch.
Google’s other investments
Google has been investing in AI startups for a long time. In 2014, the company bought London-based DeepMind, which was recently merged with Google Brain team to form Google DeepMind.
Read Also
The company has also invested $2 billion in Anthropic, which also uses Google’s cloud services as well as its latest version of TPUs.
Meanwhile, competitors like Microsoft have also invested billions in OpenAI.
Last week, US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan said that the agency is looking into investments in AI startups to examine whether there are any anti-competitive behaviours.
FacebookTwitterLinkedin
end of article