Google Reportedly Spent $2.7 Bln To Rehire Character.AI Founder Noam Shazeer

(RTTNews) - An article from The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has made a substantial investment of $2.7 billion to bring back Noam Shazeer, the 48-year-old co-founder of Character.AI.

Shazeer, who had previously worked at Google, left the company in 2021 to pursue his own entrepreneurial ambitions after Google decided against launching a chatbot he had developed in collaboration with his colleague Daniel De Freitas. This decision led Shazeer and De Freitas to establish Character.AI, which quickly gained traction as a leading AI startup in Silicon Valley, achieving a remarkable valuation of $1 billion just last year.

The $2.7 billion deal is not merely a financial transaction; it encompasses a licensing agreement that allows Google to leverage Character.AI's innovative technology while simultaneously facilitating the return of Shazeer, De Freitas, and several key members of their research team to Google's AI division, DeepMind. This strategic move, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, is designed to enhance Google's capabilities in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence.

Rather than pursuing a full acquisition of Character.AI, which would have involved lengthy regulatory processes and potential delays, Google opted for this licensing arrangement. This approach enables the tech giant to access and utilize Character.AI's intellectual property more swiftly and efficiently, thereby accelerating its AI development initiatives.

Shazeer's return to Google is seen as a pivotal element of this agreement, with many insiders at the company expressing optimism about the potential impact of his expertise. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has publicly voiced his confidence in Shazeer's abilities, suggesting that he possesses the talent and vision necessary to create an AI model that could exhibit human-like intelligence.

"If there's anybody I can think of in the world who's likely to do it, it's going to be him," Schmidt was quoted as saying of Shazeer during a talk at Stanford University in 2015.