AI chat platform Character.ai announced on October 13th (Beijing time) that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, planning to sell all or most of its assets. The platform will continue to operate during the bankruptcy proceedings. According to an agreement reached before the filing, Disney Worldwide Services will act as a "dummy bidder," offering $20 million for a non-exclusive perpetual license to some of Character.ai's intellectual property and claims. Other buyers can bid higher. According to court documents compiled by tech media PPC Land, the license includes code for model training, security, and inference systems, as well as nine patents; the app, brand, user data, and trained models are not included and remain with other bidders. The same document shows that Disney expects to pay approximately $180 million in salaries and retention bonuses to the approximately 65 Character.ai employees it poached over three years, nine times the amount paid to the company itself. Last month, Disney appointed former Character.ai CEO Karandeep Anand as Chief Technology Officer. According to the proposed timetable, the bidding deadline is November 21 (Beijing time), the auction is scheduled for November 23 (Eastern Time), and the transaction is expected to be completed in late November or early December. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the company's largest creditor is Google, which owes it over $4 million.
