Initial Character.AI announced on Friday that it has reached a deal with Alphabet's Google, granting the massive search engine a non-exclusive license to use the chatbot maker's deep learning technology.
Character will benefit from the agreement, which is similar to those made in recent months by Microsoft and Amazon.Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, the co-founders of AI, have returned to Google, where they previously worked.
Regulators are keeping a close eye on those other acquisitions, indicating a rising concern in the U.S. and Europe regarding the way tech titans, who are investing billions to improve their AI infrastructure and hire top researchers from startups, put together AI deals.
Morality.The startup stated in a blog that AI will receive more cash as part of the agreement with Google, but it did not specify how much. General counsel at Character.AI, Dominic Perella, will take over as interim CEO with immediate effect.
"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," a spokesman for Google wrote in an email.
Microsoft paid $650 million in March to hire the cofounders and other employees of the AI firm Inflection. A number of cofounders and staff members from the AI firm Adept were hired by Amazon in June.
Morality.Previously, venture capitalists like Andreessen Horowitz contributed $193 million to AI. According to a November Reuters story, it was in negotiations with Google to raise hundreds of millions.
Adept and Inflection each raised $415 million and $1.3 billion.
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