An index of frontier and emerging AI labs.
Foundation models & agents
Consumer AI chatbot lab building customizable character personas trained on its own foundation models. Founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas (ex-Google LaMDA) returned to Google in August 2024 in a $2.7B licensing arrangement; the company continues under new leadership.
| Name | Character.AI |
|---|---|
| Aliases | c.ai, Character AI |
| Space | Foundation models & agents |
| Founded | 2021 |
| Latest valuation | $1B |
| Stage | — |
| Status | active |
| HQ | Menlo Park |
| Founders | Noam Shazeer, Daniel de Freitas |
| Website | https://character.ai |
| Careers | https://character.ai/careers |
| — | |
| X / Twitter | — |
| Date | Round | Amount ($M) | Valuation | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | — | $1B | reported | — |
No founders recorded yet. Submit info.
| Date | Type | Title | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-14 | added | Character.AI added to tracker | — |
No sources cited.
| Lab | Valuation | Founded |
|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | $20B | 2022 |
| Sierra | $15B | 2023 |
| MiniMax | ~$11.5B | 2021 |
| StepFun | $10B | 2023 |
| Zhipu AI | ~$6.6B (mkt cap) | 2019 |
| Hark | $6B | 2025 |
| Baichuan AI | ~$2.7B | 2023 |
| H (The H Company) | $2B | 2024 |