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Character.ai

also referred to as: character ai

15 statements across 6 episodes · 6 bullish · 4 bearish · 5 people on the record · first statement May 17, 2023 by Emad Mostaque · said 47 times in 17 episodes since 2023 · across every show →

Mentions by year

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (31), Victor Lazarte (5), Noam Shazeer (3), Rory O'Driscoll (2), Nicole Quinn (1), Michael Eisenberg (1), Emad Mostaque (1), David George (1)

tap a year for its mentions
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002.54582023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2025 8 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
2024 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
2023 31 mentions in 7 episodes 4 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Character.ai, oldest first

May 17, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Mostaque: Character.AI Sees Two Hours of Engagement Per Session
“Character AI has something like two hours a day of engagement per session”
Emad Mostaque May 17, 2023 ▶ 59:08 Emad Mostaque: These 5 Companies Will Win the AI War; Why We Need National Data Sets | E1015 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023 positive
Insight
Shazeer: Character.ai's Mission Is a Billion Users Inventing a Billion Use Cases
“I like this, sort of motto of, you know, a billion users inventing a billion use cases, because that, that's sort of the superpower of this technology.”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 6:50 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shazeer: Users Prefer Video Game Characters Over AI Psychologists for Therapy
“We put up as an example, like a psychologist character, like maybe, maybe you want to, you know, talk to something and feel better, you know, and you know, that gets a little bit of use, but then what we hear a lot more from users is like, I'm talking to a vid…”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 7:30 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shazeer: Users Report Character.ai Helps Them Practice for Social Situations
“We've gotten testimonials of people who said that they were uncomfortable, you know, talking to other people, and, like, this is great practice. This is actually helped them build up practice in either social situations.”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 9:55 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023 negative
Insight
Shazeer: Naively Training Models on Raw Chat Logs Risks Leaking User Privacy
“It's very important because, like, you know, if you just were to do the naive thing of take, like, every conversation you had with everyone and just train on it, then You could just be, like, spitting out, like, someone's private, you know, private life to, yo…”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 20:36 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shazeer: Character.ai Spent $2 Million in Compute to Train Its Model
“So you know, the model we're serving now, we train Last summer and spent about two million dollars worth of compute cycles doing it.”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 17:59 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023 negative
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shazeer: Character.ai Rejects Product Managers Who Push for Vertical Specialization
“And like, you know, we talked to like some you know, potential product managers early on and they all say the same thing. Oh yeah. Pick your verticals, narrow it down to me, to make it usable. And like, no, we're not going to hire these people. That's like the…”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 11:00 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023 positive
Insight
Shazeer: Launch General-Purpose Technology Directly to Billions of Consumers
“If you have a technology that is, like, really, really general and has billions of use cases and, like, ordinary people can use, like, launch it to billions of people.”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 2:44 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023 positive
Insight
Shazeer: Task-Specific Fine-Tuning Dramatically Improves Generally Pre-Trained AI Models
“The data that you get from users is great because It tells people like what, you know, what users like or like what users like in, in some particular application. It's kind of like a, you know, training a human. Like most of what's important is like you have y…”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 19:14 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Shazeer: Character.ai Views AI Model Hallucinations as a Feature, Not a Bug
“We consider them a feature or at least, okay, basically, our goal, you know, our strategy is, like, launch something general, let people do what they want with it, and if these models are hallucinating, which we, which they certainly are, and we advertise that…”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 25:18 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 15, 2023
Disclosure
Character.ai Spent $2 Million in Compute to Train Its Serving Model
“The model we're serving now, we trained last summer and spent about two million dollars worth of compute cycles doing it.”
Noam Shazeer Sep 15, 2023 ▶ 4:12 20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents
Sep 15, 2023
Insight
Noam Shazeer: Compute and Model Size Constrain AI Progress More Than Data
“Yeah, probably the size of the model is the bigger challenge. We can get a lot of data, but actually the number one thing that's important is how much computation you do to train it.”
Noam Shazeer Sep 15, 2023 ▶ 3:32 20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents
Sep 20, 2023 bearish
Prediction Held up
Maples: High-Priced Seed Deals Like Character.ai Won't Return 100x
“Expensive, high-priced investment, and hopefully it works, but you're not going to make a thousand times your money on that deal. You're probably not going to make a hundred times your money, even in the best of circumstances.”
Mike Maples Sep 20, 2023 ▶ 8:37 Is the VC Model Broken? Jason Lemkin, Mike Maples, Eric Paley & Harry Stebbings Debate | E1062 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 14, 2025 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Apr 2030
Lazarte: Character AI is merely the Friendster of AI companions
“In a few years, we're going to look back, and we're going to say that Character AI was Friendster. And what I mean by that is there's going to be a company that is going to be very important, and we'll look back and we'll say Character AI was the precursor of …”
Victor Lazarte Apr 14, 2025 ▶ 7:10 Benchmark GP, Victor Lazarte: The 3 Traits All the Best Founders Have · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 15, 2025 positive
Disclosure
a16z paid growth prices for early-stage Character.AI to back Noam Shazeer
“My partner, Sarah led around a character AI and, you know, it was extremely early stage and, You know, we invested at a, you know, what you would call a gross stage price. But we knew that the likelihood of some degree of success in backing Nome was extremely …”
David George Dec 15, 2025 ▶ 18:24 a16z's David George on the Most Controversial Bet at a16z & Do Margins and Revenue Matter in AI? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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