Andreessen Horowitz Leads $150 Million Series A in Character.AI

<p><strong>PALO ALTO<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; Character&period;AI has closed a &dollar;150 million Series A fundraising round at a &dollar;1 billion valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz &lpar;a16z&rpar; with participation from previous investors&comma; including Nat Friedman &lpar;former GitHub CEO&rpar;&comma; Elad Gil&comma; SV Angel and A Capital&period; Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Sarah Wang will join Character&period;AI’s board of directors&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The funds will help Character&period;AI to expand its computing abilities resulting in a more sophisticated model with advanced reasoning and greater accuracy&comma; delivering new features and capabilities to users&comma; and expanding its engineering team&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Founded in 2021 by AI and large language model pioneers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas&comma; Character&period;AI is at the forefront of critical conversational AI technology that inspires imagination&comma; discovery&comma; and understanding to help people live their best lives&comma; from making everyday tasks easier to solving complex societal issues&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Character&period;AI offers users the ability to create a fully-customizable and personalized AI companion with a distinct personality and values&period; Whether a user is seeking a sympathetic ear or an analytical problem-solver&comma; there&&num;8217&semi;s an AI at Character&period;AI to meet the unique needs of every person&period; For those less interested in complete personalization&comma; the growing community of creators at Character&period;AI have developed millions of AI characters for people to connect and use&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Daniel and I are pleased that a world class group of investors&comma; led by the amazing team at a16z&comma; believes in the remarkable advancements we’re making in AI&comma; the company we’re building&comma; and the value we can deliver to society and investors&period; We are gratified they recognize our ability to revolutionize AI and improve the way people live&comma;” said Shazeer&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Character&period;AI’s power is our highly-sophisticated language model&comma; which rapidly analyzes and contextualizes large volumes of information to produce useful intelligence tailored to each individual&comma; making it a personalized superintelligence companion that enhances productivity&comma; offers advice&comma; educates&comma; and entertains&period; The potential use cases are infinite&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Since the platform’s beta launch in September 2022&comma; Character&period;AI says it has experienced rapid growth&comma; including&colon;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<ul class&equals;"bwlistdisc">&NewLine;<li>Nearing 100 million monthly site visits&comma; a four-fold increase in two months&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>An average time on site of more than two hours per day for users who send a message&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>More than two billion messages sent by users since launch&period; The first one billion user messages were sent in the span of four months&period; The second billion user messages have been sent in the past one month&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>Users have created more than 2&period;7 million characters&period; The platform launched with fewer than 100&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>Character&period;AI is now ranked in the top 400 websites globally based on monthly visits according to Similarweb rankings&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<&sol;ul>&NewLine;