[agnokapathetic]

per The Information -- investors don't get screwed, the board repurchased all shares at $88/share ($2.5B valuation).

[blackhawkC17]

The money to repurchase shares must be coming from an external source?

I assumed Character.AI wasn’t profitable, like most AI startups.

[metadat]

Absolutely not yet profitable, not even close.

Currently a money furnace.

[tsunamifury]

These two stories are hard to rectify unless the Google licensing deal is a lump sum of several billion dollars. Which feels borderline impossible. Even Microsoft didn’t do that with open AI and the AI trade is cooking very fast.

[fnbr]

They raised ~$200M total, and $150M at the series A. So if they're just paying back investors, they'd "only" need $500M.