Character.ai is one of the many AI chatbots to explode in popularity, as the success of ChatGPT has led millions of people to find alternative chatbots offering different experiences.
In character.ai’s case, it has built a library of personalities, each with their own distinct way of interacting with users. This can come in the form of a purpose, such as a trip planner or language teacher, a famous dead person such as Albert Einstein or Elvis Presley, or as an interactive story, like a detective or anime adventure.
Character.ai is the brainchild of Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Fretias, two ex-Googlers with fingerprints on several key innovations in generative AI. The duo left Google due to the company failing to launch chatbots to the wider public, and established character.ai as a community of chatbot personalities.
The app has quickly become one of the most popular chatbot services in the world, with over 25 million active users and 18 million chatbot personalities. This popularity has sparked some concerns, as users were able to create personalities out of almost anyone, which led to legal suits from celebrities and parents of murdered children.
On top of that, there have been several instances of children spending hours on character.ai and treating the personalities more akin to real people than words generated by an algorithm. This has led to character.ai adding more guardrails and removing a lot of bots flagged by the community.
In August 2024, Google acqui-hired the two co-founders and invested in character.ai. Alongside this, Google also received a non-exclusive license to use character.ai’s large language model. Shazeer and de Fretias have both been assigned high positions in Google’s AI division, but it’s not clear as to the future leadership of character.ai.
We have collected data and statistics on character.ai. Read on below to find out more. Want to dig deeper? Check out our AI app report.
character.ai Key Statistics
- character.ai had 28 million active users in August 2024, an increase of 8 million on the start of the year
- character.ai has been downloaded over 20 million times
- Google acqui-hired character.ai co-founders in August 2024, alongside an investment and a non-exclusive license agreement
character.ai Overview
| Title 1 | Title 2 |
|---|---|
| Launch date | 5 November 2021 |
| HQ | San Francisco, California |
| People | Dominic Perella (interim CEO), Noam Shazeer (co-founder), Daniel De Freitas (co-founder) |
| Business type | Private |
| Industry | AI |
character.ai Users
character.ai had 28 million active users in August 2024, making it one of the most used chatbots in the world.
| Date | Users (mm) |
|---|---|
| Aug 2023 | 15 |
| Jan 2024 | 20 |
| Aug 2024 | 28 |
Sources: AI App Report, Company data
character.ai Downloads
character.ai iOS and Google Play apps have been downloaded over 20 million times.
| Date | Downloads (mm) |
|---|---|
| H2 2023 | 11.6 |
| H1 2024 | 9.5 |
Sources: Appfigures, AppMagic
character.ai Funding
character.ai has received a very small amount of funding in comparison to a few other big name chatbots.
| Date | Funding | Lead investors |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 2023 | $150k | Andreessen Horowitz |
| Jan 2023 | $80k |
Source: Crunchbase
AI App Users
Over 300 million people use AI apps worldwide, with ChatGPT being the most widely used.
AI app users 2021 to 2024 (mm)
Want to learn more about AI apps? Check out the AI App Report
character.ai FAQ
How many chatbots have been created on character.ai?
There have been 18 million chatbot personalities created on character.ai
What is the average time spent on character.ai by active users?
Active users spend two hours on character.ai, although the startup did not define what makes an active user (QZ)
How much did Google pay to acqui-hire the character.ai co-founders?
Google reportedly paid character.ai $2.7 billion as an investment, in return they received a non-exclusive license to character.ai’s LLM and a few of the executive team moved to Google (Aim Research)
