August 3rd report from Jinshi states that AI digital avatar unicorn company Character.AI announced Google (GOOG.O) has paid licensing fees to Character.AI for its payment model. Google will integrate Character.AI’s co-founder and CEO, Norm Scharz, president Daniel DeFreitas, and approximately 30 of Character’s employees engaged in model training and voice AI work (out of a total of about 130 employees) into its Gemini AI project. Character.AI’s management informed employees that investor shares will be acquired at an estimated value of approximately $88 per share. Google’s overall acquisition of Character.AI is reported to exceed $2.5 billion.
