After quitting Google in October 2021 to launch the chatbot company backed by a16z, Character AI co-founder and chief executive officer Noam Shazeer is returning to the company, marking a significant shift.
Character AI Leadership Changes
AI co-founder Daniel De Freitas is also joining Google with some other employees from the startup. Dominic Perella, Character AI’s general counsel, is becoming an interim CEO at the startup. The company noted that most of the staff is staying at AI.
Non-Exclusive Agreement with Google
Google is also signing a non-exclusive agreement with Character AI to use its tech super excited to return to Google and work as part of the Google DeepMind team. I am so proud of everything we built at AI over the last 3 years. I am confident that the funds from the non-exclusive Google licensing agreement, together with the incredible Character AI team, positions AI for continued success in the future,” Shazeer said in a statement given to TechCrunch.
Shazeer’s Role at Google
Google said that Shazeer is joining the DeepMind research team but didn’t specify his or De Freitas’s exact roles.
“We’re particularly thrilled to welcome back Noam, a preeminent researcher in machine learning, who is joining Google DeepMind’s research team, along with a small number of his colleagues,” Google said in a statement. “This agreement will provide increased funding for AI to continue growing and to focus on building personalized Character AI products for users around the world,” a Google spokesperson said.
Character AI’s Strategy Shift
“When Noam and Daniel started Character AI, our goal of personalized superintelligence required a full-stack approach. We had to pre-train models and post-train them to power the experiences that make AI special and build a product platform with the ability to reach users globally,” AI mentioned in its blog announcing the move.
“Over the past two years, however, the landscape has shifted; many more pre-trained models are now available. Given these changes, we see an advantage in making greater use of third-party LLMs alongside our own. This allows us to devote even more resources to post-training and creating new product experiences for our growing user base.”
Potential Regulatory Scrutiny
There is a possibility that different regulatory bodies, such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Department of Justice (DoJ) in the U.S. and the EU will scrutinize these reverse acquisitions closely. Last month, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a notice saying that it is looking into Microsoft hiring key people from Inflection Character AI to understand if the tech giant is trying to avoid regulatory oversight. The FTC opened a similar investigation in June to look into Microsoft’s $650 million deal.
