I had the same thing happen. Twice, actually - after the non-competes expired for the first acquisition, of course I accepted a position working for the same guy at the next company. Another successful exit there. These were small time, meat and potatoes type startup companies. Nothing fancy. The one thing I did post about here on HN, which I think was one 1) ahead of its time, 2) lacked investor connections, 3) we went with Oakland instead of SF DID flame out spectacularly. My part was the money from the first acquisition plus about 40% of my savings. Ah well. Gotta try it a few times. (still looking for the next opportunity)

What are you talking about? I was an employee in 2024 and I was not “screwed”. My options were converted into cash at the same valuation that Google paid (vesting schedule remained intact though). Noam did right by his employees.

It reads like they didn't go under yet, they just expected to with the way the legal challenges were going. As part of that, Disney seems to hope to be taking a good portion (all?) of the employees in the sale. Without keeping staffing up, the sale might not have been viable. If they didn't have such an exit plan involving the employees still being around then it might have made more sense to freeze hiring and ride it out until the end or whatever option would make sense in that story.

Removing their fake job postings is low on the priority list. Same with the other companies and their fake job postings...

That shouldn't have been a problem given that AI can fully replace talent. The whole company should in theory only have needed a dream and an Anthropic subscription.

Well one of those two names was a core contributor to the Attention paper, arguably the top contributor, before leaving Google to make Character Ai, no wonder the re-hired him back (before he left again).

That's a long time ago. They should have been able to make a go of it in these hyped times.

Same thing they did with windsurf

Probably auctioned off, like what happened to Spirit Airlines: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-law/google-aims-to-...

It’s a company asset to auction off to the highest bidder now

Agreed, IMHO this might be the real reason.

What were those specific problems they faced? I haven't paid any attention the market for cloud-based AI services by all these non-frontier companies, but I know it's a big market

Well, he founded it!

Sometimes talent decides to just make money and scam people into thinking talking with AI versions of celebrities as something worthwhile and positive for the world.

They have no investors, afaik

I had a conversation with someone some time in 2024 about Character Ai, wondering how something so obviously exploitative could exist, one data point to consider.

I don't know if there is something to be joyful about.

AI won't go away, it will just end up being a monopoly.

>"Let this be a warning to shit companies with shit products and shit business models."

...that you can be a shit company with a shit product and a shit business model and still make a shit ton of money and get hired by Google?

It only takes a pebble to start a landslide.

Most pebbles don't start landslides, but almost all landslides started with a pebble.

Remember that almost all the "value" in AI companies right now is based on perception, not reported profits.

I mean a famous AI company filing for bankrupcy might get some investors to hold their breath, given how also OpenAI and Anthropic aren't profitable.

>Really progressing humanity forward :/

You're using amazing technology funded through those financial processes to complain that those financial processes aren't progressing humanity forward lol. Modern AI is the perfect example of how financial systems are important for technological progression.

Thinking complex financial systems aren't contributing to humanity's progress because you don't recognize how it is used to fundamentally support the work that progresses humanity is like thinking taxes are a scam because you don't recognize how much you actually benefit from taxes everyday.

Replace the people with LLMs and we're well on our way to immanentizing the "Vile Offspring" of Stross's Accelerando.

Not when the product creates psychosis in people and makes them lonelier and sadder than before and encourages them to starve and cut themselves. Where is the value in this? https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/characterai-chatbot...

I have the impression that if MAU by itself was sufficient, the company wouldn’t have had to file for bankruptcy.

Obviously the company failed to convert its MAU into paying users, despite the fact the token costs greatly declined over the last years.

I disagree that it's reductive. If each user costs more in API tokens then your company isn't valuable. That's what everyone's been screaming from the rooftops about there being a bubble. We certainly use tons of AI at the company I work for, if we were paying full API prices then I would bet we'd be barely using it.

webvan and pets.com have entered the chat.

As we saw after the hero Zelenskyy took down Yandex data centers, user count seems to be vaporware in many cases.

A drug dealer at the corner also has lots of active monthly users.

accrete means grow or make larger/greater; this is the opposite were a bunch of value moved around, some was lost (from an efficiency / opportunity cost perspective) and a bunch was concentrated into the hands of a few. That's not value growth.