Palo Alto, United States
$1.0B
VALUATION
bloomberg.comConversational AI platform for creating and chatting with AI characters for entertainment and utility.
OpenAI has hired Transformer co-author and Google Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer, along with former White House AI policy official Dean Ball, as it prepares for a public listing. Shazeer is leaving Google and his startup Character.AI, while Ball will lead a new Strategic Futures team focused on frontier AI policy and governance starting July 6, 2026.
Vietnam’s VnExpress reported on March 8, 2026 that Christian Gibson and Noah Shpak, two founding members of Mira Murati–led AI startup Thinking Machines Lab, have left to join Meta. The departures follow earlier exits of other co-founders and senior researchers to both Meta and OpenAI, after the startup raised about $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation in 2025.
On January 15, 2026, Stateline reported that multiple U.S. states are passing laws to restrict AI therapy chatbots after several suicides linked to interactions with mental health bots. States like Illinois and Nevada have banned AI-only behavioral health tools, while New York and Utah now require chatbots to disclose they are not human and to route users to crisis support.