YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Character.ai files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

41 points nryoo 6 hours ago 14 comments

drewbitt 5 hours ago | parent

2 years in, the founders and 30 researchers took Google's $2.7b and left. Then they had to ban kids which was probably most of their userbase. Yet they were still putting $1m/mo on the corporate cards with 86 full time bay area employees on ~$278k average base, and almost $100k owed to DoorDash. lol

judetechdevs 4 hours ago | parent

$100k in DoorDash is a lifestyle

renegade-otter 3 hours ago | parent

Sometimes watching the fresh-faced punks make bank while I slave away at a "regular" company for average pay is just demoralizing. It's really about being at the right place, time, and near the right people, isn't it.

inSumErgoCogito 52 minutes ago | parent

Its all about hacking companies and VCs - instead of hacking hard problems. Astra- give me the API of my society.. what do you mean Bearer Token..

logicchains 49 minutes ago | parent

Joining or starting a startup is a risk, many fail and leave the founders and early joiners with nothing. No risk, no reward.

jubilanti 39 minutes ago | parent

Nothing except the $278k average base salary, while living luxuriously at work and probably home too on the startup's expense card, as the $100k door dash bill shows. I bet there were a ton of fancy off sites in Hawaii or wherever.

Meanwhile at $bigco I just got my request to buy a shitty $1k Dell laptop denied because I got one 2 years ago and I have to wait 1 more.

pmarreck 34 minutes ago | parent

They were clearly in it for the investor perks and not the product, spending away like that.

If you want an unsustainable joyride, then you too can work for a startup headed for chapter 11 (like 8 out of 10 startups).

Also, knowing people in general has never not been valuable. It's arguably the main thing holding most engineers back from success. Plenty of evidence backs this up: Type fewer keys, press more palms.

deadbabe 12 minutes ago | parent

You also have to be a total scumbag.

sarkarghya 3 hours ago | parent

i dont know why this isn't getting much attention. Isn't this the fate of most ai chat services?

Aboutplants 33 minutes ago | parent

Outside of being acquired, this is the exit

andsoitis 1 hour ago | parent

”Character.ai’s CEO Karandeep Anand is joining Disney in a newly created role as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. Karan expects to be joined by members of Character’s technical team to build on Disney’s impressive technology capabilities to help connect fans worldwide with its beloved stories and characters in new and innovative ways.”

— https://blog.character.ai/the-next-chapter-of-entertainment-...

martianvoid 3 minutes ago | parent

These people are playing on a completely different league