Character.AI Secures $1 Billion Valuation in Latest Funding Round

Character.AI, a start-up that builds online chatbots, has raised $150 million in a funding round that valued the company at $1 billion. The company, founded by ex-Google employees, is among a small group of companies building large language models (L.L.M.s) that could rival the systems under development at OpenAI. These companies require huge amounts of capital and could dominate the new artificial intelligence market. Character.AI offers a website where people can chat with a reasonable facsimile of almost anyone, and the underlying technology could power many applications beyond chatbots. The company plans to raise additional funds from strategic partners to buy computing power.