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Comment by jchonphoenix | Hacker News Reader

This is another inflection style "acquisition." Highly unethical of the founders and screws over all your employees and investors who are left holding the bag.

For those asking, c.ai has very high cost and looks like a typical consumer company that burns money for use, so they were decent on revenue but not near profitability.

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> Character’s leaders told staff on Friday that investors would be bought out at a valuation of about $88 per share. That’s about 2.5 times the value of shares in Character’s 2023 Series A, which valued the company at $1 billion, they said.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-hires-charact...

> investors would be bought out at a valuation of about $88 per share. That’s about 2.5 times the value of shares in Character’s 2023 Series A, which valued the company at $1 billion

Those investors almost certainly have a liquidation preference. How much did employee shareholders get? I'd guess zero.

"I am confident that the funds from the non-exclusive Google licensing agreement, together with the incredible Character.AI team, positions Character.AI for continued success in the future,” Shazeer said in a statement given to TechCrunch."

That's a pretty hilarious statement from a Founder/CEO, given the circumstances.

>liquidation preference. How much did employee shareholders get? I'd guess zero.

But they aren't filing for chapter 11? I assume all shareholders will be bought out, including the employees, and this will be paid for by Google who will license their models, presumably as a scheme to pay off of the investors as I doubt they actually need those models at all.

(assuming the linked source is correct.)

got it. so instead of employees and investors screwed, only employees are screwed..

To do better by the employees, the CEO really should have fought harder to have the whole company get acqui-hired, even if Google would have shut down the service. Maybe there were some other considerations that I’m not seeing (ie. There are good reasons the company should be kept going, and there’s a good path to success even without Noam. The article doesn’t specify how many employees are going over, so it’s hard to tell.) Landing the employees a relatively cushy Google SWE gig after helping build your company is the least you could do for them.

When you don't understand reasoning, always look at who the beneficiaries are in these situations.

I'm also wondering how much money they spend on legal fees, given that they are copying then likenesses of many celebrities without their permission (that's the only way I've heard abot them before).

Everybody has a price

don't forget Adept

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