Character.AI, the Google-backed AI chatbot supplier with tens of hundreds of thousands of month-to-month energetic customers, announced on Friday that Karandeep Anand, the previous VP of Enterprise Merchandise at Meta, is becoming a member of the corporate as CEO.
Beforehand a board adviser to Character.AI, Anand is entering into the CEO function at a pivotal second for the chatbot supplier, as the corporate tries to concurrently develop its platform whereas combatting baby security considerations. In current months, Character.AI has added an array of recent security options in mild of an energetic lawsuit, which alleges that one of many firm’s chatbots performed a task within the loss of life of a 14-year-old Florida boy.
Anand involves Character.AI with expertise operating promoting merchandise that reached billions of customers on Meta’s apps. Beforehand, Anand served as Microsoft’s head of product administration, overseeing person expertise on the corporate’s cloud platform, Azure. Most just lately, Anand served because the president of the fintech startup Brex.
Anand is taking on Character.AI simply over 10 months after Google employed away the startup’s co-founder and CEO, Noam Shazeer, who had beforehand led core AI groups on the Mountain View big. On the time, Google additionally signed a non-exclusive settlement to make use of Character.AI’s expertise.
Character.AI’s take care of Google prompted federal regulators to investigate the companies’ relationship over antitrust considerations. It’s considered one of many reverse-acquihire offers within the AI startup area that’s acquired regulatory scrutiny, alongside Microsoft’s take care of Inflection.AI.
Character.AI has raised greater than $150 million in enterprise funding, largely from Andreessen Horowitz.
In a weblog submit, Anand stated considered one of his first priorities can be making security filters “much less overbearing.” The brand new CEO famous that the corporate cares deeply about customers security, however that too typically, “the app filters issues which might be completely innocent.”
Anand additionally stated he plans to enhance the standard of AI fashions on Character.AI’s platform, innovate round reminiscence options, and improve transparency round choice making. He says many of those options are coming within the subsequent 60 days.
Chatbots which might be purely designed for leisure, which Character.AI focuses on, are rising into a large marketplace for generative AI — a pattern that’s been shocking to many. In 2024, 66% of the corporate’s customers had been between the age of 18 and 24, and 72% of the corporate’s customers had been ladies, based on knowledge from Sensor Tower.