- Writing Inc
- Posts
- š¤ How Character.AI raised $150m with zero revenue
š¤ How Character.AI raised $150m with zero revenue
PLUS: AI blazes through business school
Alright, Monday of another week of AI.
Weāre bracing for AI news impact.
š¤ Top Stories
𤯠No revenue? No problem! $150m in funding for Character.AI

Source: Character.ai
If your startup has AI in its name, and HASNāT raised $100b, then youāre doing something wrong.
I know what youāre thinking, and no. You donāt even need revenue.
Ask Character.AI.
The pre-revenue AI startup raised $150mm at a ONE BILLION DOLLAR valuation.
What commanded such a high valuation?
Character.AI allows you to make fully-customized AI avatars. It got popular because you could use it to make a realistic celebrity chatbot. Want to ask Steve Jobs about the iPhone? Now you can.
Character wants you to use it more as a coworker, though. Especially after what happened to Replika AI. That was the startup where users got a little too, wellā¦attached to their experiences with the chatbots. So, Character is treading lightly.
There are some paid features on the way, so A16Z (the lead investor) was right to see the dollar signs.
Itās wild that a company can reach a cool billion without any revenue.
Such is AI.
š¬ AI Trump fools real-world Twitter

Itās like the New York City Marathon. Source: BBC
Fake news is about to take on a new meaning.
Recently, reports circulated that former U.S. President Donald Trumpās arrest was imminent.
For the record, he has not been arrested or charged with a crime.
That didnāt stop the AI-generated images from executing some vigilante justice. They arrested him themselves.
These pictures spread with captions like āthe most dramatic arrest everā.
While it didnāt fool most people, it fooled enough.
We know - the small details in AI photos reveal all. But how many people look closely?
And honestly - how will social platforms auto-detect this in the future?
š¤AI blazes through business school

Uh, professor, can you please read at 5x speed? Youāre a little slow.
A Wharton professor decided to see how much an AI could do in thirty minutes.
Hereās the TL;DR.
For an AI, he chose Bing. He fed it some information about an entrepreneurship game called the Saturn Parable.
After that, one prompt:
Pretend you are marketing genius. We are going to launch the Saturn Parable. You should give me a document that outlines an email marketing campaign and a single webpage to promote the game.
From there, it created
A four-part email marketing campaign with copy
A launch website
A social media marketing campaign with copy
A script for a marketing video
All in less than 30 minutes.
Now, frequent users of ChatGPT arenāt surprised by this.
Whatās scary is how easy it is. This is a multi-part assignment at LEAST for any business school student.
Once AI automates that, what are students going to do?
š AI tools, tips, links
Words to website, using AI. Learn more
Browse your business tools through ChatGPT. Learn more
Learn from AI-chatbot Naval. Learn more
AI travel planner! Learn more
ChatGPT for Blender, again. Learn more
Bing wasn't having it.

š¤ Got feedback for us?
Head over to our Twitter, @RobotRockDaily, and let us know what youād like to see more or less of.