Character.AI

Consumer AI chat platform with persona-based conversational agents; 20M+ DAU at peak in 2024. In August 2024 Google signed a $2.7B non-exclusive IP licence and rehired the founders — the company continues independently under new CEO Dominic Perella. Equity situation is complex post-deal; employees received partial liquidity.

Consumer AI🇺🇸 United StatesFounded 2021ISO/NSO equitycharacter.ai ↗

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Reviewed May 24, 2026 (2d ago)

Current estimate

4 methods · May 24, 2026Medium confidence (40%)

$4.5B

range $3.3B – $5.7B⚠ methods disagree (8.2× spread)

Implied per-share: $22.5 · vs last primary +67%

This estimate reflects what informed investors are paying on secondary markets like Hiive and Forge — not the 409A valuation on your grant letter.

Last primary round

$2.7B

Google strategic · 22mo ago

Secondary signal

$4.8B

Forge · 2026-04+78%

Sourced from Forge/Hiive public data. Full order books require a paid subscription; figures shown are best-effort from public disclosures.

Headcount

200

employees · LinkedIn+11%

LinkedIn count — directional proxy only. Historical figure sourced via Wayback Machine; treat ±15% as normal variance.

Revenue (est.)

$60M

annual run rate · est.

ℹ

Google signed a $2.7B non-exclusive IP licence and re-hired founders in Aug 2024; company continues independently under new CEO.

Complete company data

Every input we use, where we got it from, and how much we trust it.

Field	Value	Source	Confidence
Company fundamentals
Sector	Consumer AI	Editorial classification	high
Headquarters	🇺🇸 United States	Company website · Crunchbase	high
Founded	2021	Company website · Wikipedia	high
Website	character.ai	Direct	high
Latest primary round
Post-money valuation	$2.7B	Bloomberg Aug 2024	high
Round name	Google strategic	Bloomberg Aug 2024	high
Date	2024-08-02 (22 months ago)	Bloomberg Aug 2024	high
Lead investor	Google	Bloomberg Aug 2024	high
Amount raised	$2.7B	Bloomberg Aug 2024	medium
Capitalization
Total fully-diluted shares	200M	SEC Form D · secondary price math · cap-table leaks › notes Public total fully-diluted share count: estimated from SEC Form D filings, secondary-market pricing math (implied valuation ÷ price per share), and leaked cap-table summaries. Considered the lowest-confidence input.	low
Implied share price (latest primary)	$22	Valuation × 1000 / share count (= $2.7B ÷ 200M)	medium
Primary equity type granted	ISO/NSO	Public reports of company equity practices	high
Financials
Annual revenue (est.)	$60M	Sacra · The Information · press leaks › notes Annual revenue: best public estimates from Sacra, The Information, WSJ leaks, or company-stated ARR. Where official, we cite the source on the funding round.	medium
EV / Revenue (implied)	45.0x	Computed from valuation ÷ revenue	medium
Headcount
Employees (now)	200	LinkedIn — current company page count › notes Headcount: LinkedIn 'Company' page employee count, taken now and approximately 12 months ago via the Wayback Machine. Treat as a directional proxy for revenue growth, not a hard number.	medium
Employees (12 months ago)	180	LinkedIn via Wayback Machine	medium
12-month headcount growth	+11%	Computed	medium
Methodology inputs
Sector ETF proxy	BOTZ	Editorial choice — most representative public ETF › notes Sector ETF: editorial choice of the most representative public-market proxy. Annual return: 3-year trailing average from Yahoo Finance, refreshed quarterly.	medium
ETF annual return (trailing 3-yr)	14%	Yahoo Finance · refreshed quarterly	medium

Funding history

Primary rounds reported in Bloomberg, WSJ, TechCrunch, Reuters, or SEC Form D filings (efts.sec.gov). Linked per round below.

Valuation progression (equity rounds)

Valuation progression · equity rounds

$2.7Blatest · Google strategic

Total growth

45×

Our estimate

$4.5B

Primary round

Down round

Our estimate

Google strategic+170%2024-08-02

$2.7B

Led by Google · raised $2.7B

Source: Bloomberg Aug 2024

Series A+1567%2023-03-23

$1.0B

Led by a16z · raised $150M

Source: TechCrunch Mar 2023

Seed2022-11-01

$0.1B

Led by a16z · raised $10M

Source: TechCrunch

Secondary market signals

Secondary market signals: bid/ask/trade indications from Hiive (hiive.com), Forge Global, Caplight Index, and tender prices reported in the press.

Implied valuation over time

Implied valuation · secondary market

$4.8B+4% vs first recorded

Trade

⚠

Forge and Hiive publish aggregated market data publicly, but full order books, individual bids/asks, and confirmed trade prices require a paid account. The figures below are sourced from their public summaries, press-reported tender prices, and SEC disclosures. They represent the best publicly available signal — not a guaranteed executable price.

Date	Type	Source	Price / share	Implied valuation
2026-04-28	trade	Forge	$24	$4.8B
2026-02-25	trade	Hiive	$23	$4.6B

View live indications: Hiive ↗ · SEC Form D filings ↗

Public peer comparables

Public peer comparables: editorial selection of public companies with the closest business model. EV/Revenue and growth from public 10-Q filings and Bloomberg, refreshed quarterly.

Ticker	Company	EV / Revenue	Revenue growth	As of
META	Meta Platforms, Inc.	7.21x	+33%	2026-05-20
NFLX	Netflix, Inc.	7.96x	+16%	2026-05-20
NVDA	NVIDIA Corporation	20.57x	+85%	2026-05-20
UBER	Uber Technologies, Inc.	2.72x	+14%	2026-05-20

Confidence breakdown

How much we trust each of the four valuation methods for this specific company, and why.

Method A — Peer-multiple

weight 25%→ $0.6B23% confidence

↳ Effectively excluded from the blend — this method is structurally unreliable for this company.

Growth-weighted peer EV/Revenue: 14.5x → 28% private-company discount → 10.4x on $60M revenue. Output implies less than half the recent market anchor ($5B) — this company is likely valued on optionality / non-revenue factors and Method A is structurally less reliable here.

Method B — Secondary-implied

weight 45%→ $4.7B55% confidence

Recency-weighted average of 2 secondary indications (180-day decay)

Method C — Primary time-decay

weight 20%→ $5.1B49% confidence

$2.7B round (2024-08-02) × 2.09× growth × 0.91× multiple decay over 1.8 years

Method D — Sector momentum

weight 10%→ $3.4B33% confidence

$2.7B × (1 + 14% p.j.)^1.8yr = $3.4B via BOTZ ETF-proxy

Overall confidence

40%

Weighted average of the four methods. Above 65% is high, 40–65% medium, below 40% low.

Medium

Worked example for an employee

A concrete walk-through using a hypothetical employee profile. Same engine the calculator uses — try it with your real numbers.

Profile: a hypothetical employee who joined Character.AI 24 months ago (2024-05-26) with 2,000 options, on the standard 4-year vesting schedule with a 1-year cliff.

Vesting

1,000 of 2,000

50% vested at month 24

Implied share price (mid)

$22

weighted average of 4 methods

Gross vested value

$22,493

vested shares × implied price

Net value

$22,493

no strike, gross = net

Tax (rough)

$2,467

US federal only · AMT risk: low

What if the next round is…

Up round +30%

$25,426

New round at +30% valuation, 15% new shares issued

Down round −30%

$13,121

New round at −30% valuation, 20% new shares (higher dilution in distress)

Secondary today

$19,119

Sale on the secondary market at the typical 15% discount to the mid estimate

These numbers come from the same engine as the live calculator. Walk through with your own grant: use your real numbers →

Transparent assumptions

What we assumed where exact data isn't available. If any of these don't match your situation, the numbers above will be off.

Fully-diluted share count

200M shares

We don't have authoritative cap-table access for private companies. The number above is reconstructed from SEC Form D filings, secondary-market price-vs-valuation math, and leaked share-class summaries. Actual fully-diluted count (including unvested option pool and SAFEs) may differ by 5–15%.

Common-stock waterfall

1.0× to common

We assume a clean common-stock outcome — i.e. preferred-share liquidation preferences and ratchets do not extract value before common. In a down-exit, this assumption can be very wrong: preferred stack can take 30–70% of proceeds.

Private-company illiquidity discount

28% off public peers

Applied to Method A (peer-multiple). Per-company because category leaders with deep secondary markets and a clear IPO path warrant a smaller discount than early-stage names. The literature range is 10–35%; for Character.AI we use 28% based on secondary-market depth, valuation history, and proximity to liquidity.

Revenue growth assumption (Method C)

50% YoY

Compounded forward from the last primary date to today to estimate the company's value drift. Set per-company based on disclosed or reported ARR trajectory. Method C is further capped at 1.3× the most recent secondary trade (if any) to stop runaway extrapolation when revenue growth outpaces what the market is actually paying.

Sector ETF momentum (Method D)

BOTZ @ 14%/year

Method D applies the trailing return of BOTZ as a market-proxy adjustment to the primary valuation. Crude — meant as a tiebreaker when peer and secondary data conflict, not as a primary signal.

Outlier auto-downweight

Methods >50% from median get ½ weight

Robust-statistics safety net: any method whose output strays more than 50% from the median of the other three methods has its confidence weight halved when computing the blended mid-point. Prevents a single bad extrapolation from dragging the headline.

Recency decay for secondary trades

180-day half-life (e⁻ᵈ/¹⁸⁰)

A trade from 30 days ago counts ~5× more than one from 180 days ago. Tunable; some platforms use shorter half-lives.

Tax estimate

US federal only, single filer

Uses 2024 US federal brackets, ignoring state tax, NIIT, AMT credit recovery, and any other deductions. Treat as a directional sanity check, not a tax bill.

All data from public sources. Not investment, tax, or legal advice. Not affiliated with Character.AI. Last refreshed manually — see methodology for our update cadence.