Character.AI taps Meta’s former VP of business products as CEO

Character.AI, the Google-backed AI chatbot supplier with tens of thousands and thousands of month-to-month energetic customers, introduced on Friday that Karandeep Anand, the previous VP of Enterprise Merchandise at Meta, is becoming a member of the corporate as CEO.

Beforehand a board adviser to Character.AI, Anand is getting into the CEO position at a pivotal second for the chatbot supplier, as the corporate tries to concurrently develop its platform whereas combating little one security considerations. In current months, Character.AI has added an array of recent security options in mild of an energetic lawsuit, which alleges that one of many firm’s chatbots performed a job within the demise of a 14-year-old Florida boy.

Anand involves Character.AI with expertise working promoting merchandise that reached billions of customers on Meta’s apps. Beforehand, Anand served as Microsoft’s head of product administration, overseeing consumer expertise on the corporate’s cloud platform, Azure. Most not too long ago, Anand served because the president of the fintech startup Brex.

Anand is taking on Character.AI simply over 10 months after Google employed away the startup’s co-founder and CEO, Noam Shazeer, who had beforehand led core AI groups on the Mountain View large. On the time, Google additionally signed a non-exclusive settlement to make use of Character.AI’s know-how.

Character.AI’s take care of Google prompted federal regulators to analyze the businesses’ relationship over antitrust considerations. It’s one in all many reverse-acquihire offers within the AI startup house that’s obtained regulatory scrutiny, alongside Microsoft’s take care of Inflection.AI.

Character.AI has raised greater than $150 million in enterprise funding, largely from Andreessen Horowitz.

In a weblog submit, Anand mentioned one in all his first priorities can be making security filters “much less overbearing.” The brand new CEO famous that the corporate cares deeply about customers security, however that too usually, “the app filters issues which might be completely innocent.”

Anand additionally mentioned he plans to enhance the standard of AI fashions on Character.AI’s platform, innovate round reminiscence options, and improve transparency round determination making. He says many of those options are coming within the subsequent 60 days.

Chatbots which might be purely designed for leisure, which Character.AI focuses on, are rising into an enormous marketplace for generative AI — a pattern that’s been shocking to many. In 2024, 66% of the corporate’s customers had been between the age of 18 and 24, and 72% of the corporate’s customers had been girls, based on information from Sensor Tower.